June 15, 2014

ACTIONS:
- Cascadia Green Workshop 21 June, Esquimalt
- Send: in your letters!
CRD SEWAGE NEWS: 
Audio-Visual News:
- Mayor Hamilton on CFAX 10 June
- Mayor Desjardins on CFAX, CTV 10 June
- CHEK Speeches 11 June
- CTV interviews Mayor Desjardins
- CHEK covers Elardo in America
- Godfrey on June 11
- Geoff Young was on CFAX 13 June
- Mayor Leonard on CBC on June 12
- Isitt on CFAX 14 June
- The RITE Plan's Youtube Channel
News stories:
- Local mayors talk sewage with BC environment minister
- Seattle Times: Victoria sewage creates new stink
- Victoria region's sewage bill could rise by $100 million
- Capital Regional District presses on with sewage-treatment plan
LETTERS:
- Maybe Victoria should boycott Seattle (Davis)
- Sewage treatment model flawed (Lloyd)
- Victoria sewage no threat to Seattle (Platts)
- Time to get serious about sewage plant location (Porteous)
- Local politicians should risk being fined (Roger)
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ACTIONS:

Cascadia Green Workshop 21 June, Esquimalt

Cascadia Green Building Council Technical Workshop,
Saturday, 21 June 2014, 9am to 3pm
Esquimalt

Still 71 free spots: 
Register at:
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SEND IN YOUR LETTERS!
CRD SEWAGE NEWS

Audio-Visual News:

Mayor Desjardins on CFAX 10 June; CTV

Mayor of Esquimalt Barb Desjardins was on CFAX 1070 with Al Ferraby this morning to talk about tomorrow's sewage meeting
Length: 7m08s
Here's the longer clip from the afternoon interview with CFAX host Ian Jessop:
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Mayor Hamilton on CFAX 10 June

Mayor Carol Hamilton was on CFAX with Terry Moore at 4pm to talk about the sewage project and a few other local Colwood issues:
In the first half, and putting Amalgamation on the ballot, only 3 out of 7,000 taxpayers and 17,000 citizens sent in a card asking Colwood council to put the amalgamation question on the ballot that leaves just Victoria doing this during the Nov. election.
In the second half and on the topic of sewage, Mayor Hamilton talks about her trip to the innovative sewage treatment plant in Sechelt.

Start listening from 11m00s
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CHEK Speeches 11 June
CHEK did a second story on the sewage speeches that were given today at today's CRD meeting which went no where:

http://youtu.be/fWgboE0S3Vs

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CTV interviews Mayor Desjardins
CTV's Stephanie Sherlock interviewed Mayor Barb Desjardins earlier today:
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CHEK covers Elardo in America

Something smells but it's not the sewage:

http://youtu.be/n0zxPkJhdjw

Local media in WA state aren't going to know that Pam Elardo "advises" on the CRD as a Commission Member. This is yet another leg of CRD's raw sewage PR campaign:
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Godfrey on June 11

http://youtu.be/gOM7q0tSVWY

Another top notch speech! Dave Godfrey came to the sewage committee meeting to remind them of 4 points:

1. Saanich and Victoria lack social acceptance of the sewage plan
2. Re-read the IRM Report -- it's good.
3. Don't let the "foxes design the chicken coop"
4. Look to Sechelt and Whistler for a pricing exercise
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Geoff Young was on CFAX 13 June
His latest promise: "We have to explore all the options...I think we have to look at every possibility".
It all sounds good until he switches to his main trust which is to bribe Esquimalt to take the plant which is one of every opportunity I guess. If that's the case, you might as well explore putting the plant in the Arctic via a long enough pipeline.
Esquimalt resident's aren't going to be very happy to hear what he essentially said: your values are for sale.
Young refers to an approx. $20m amenity package which he seems to have added up this way:
- $7m heat loop Esquimalt doesn't want
- $6m mitigation package
- $8.6m for barging
Didn't Young pay attention at the public hearing?
At the public hearing the issues of climate change, 15m provincial setbacks and Tsunami risk never factors into Young's belief that McLoughlin is the best site. That's short-term thinking that will burn the next generation who will have to relocate the plant.
At 5m35s Young doesn't think there is a difference between a Biosolids plant at Viewfield and an underground plant in the Village Centre.
Somehow, I doubt that Young will be presenting these arguments to his citizens when he's faced with locating a plant.
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Mayor Leonard on CBC on June 12

I believe that is about how much credibility he has on the subject, about 10 min. worth, given his abysmal attendance record at the CRD sewage meetings: 1/60. Ouch.

http://www.cbc.ca/ontheisland/2014/06/13/saanich-sewage-options/
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Isitt on CFAX 14 June

Victoria Councillor Ben Isitt was on CFAX 1070 with Pamela McCall last week:
He's worried about being fined as $100,000 as a CRD Director under the Fisheries Act.
Here's some background on that:
NB: Ian Jessop reported on the air that he FOI'd the legal opinion and CRD refused to release it.
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RITE Plan's Youtube Channel

Frequently updated with the most vital and interesting snippets that show the best and the worst of the CRD's sewage planning process

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News stories:

Local mayors talk sewage with BC environment minister

CFAX
June 13, 2014

More cracks are appearing in the CRD’s plan to establish a central sewage treatment plant at McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt.

Several area mayors met with Environment Minister Mary Polak this morning.

Victoria’s Mayor Dean Fortin had a private meeting – where he raised the possibility of Victoria going it alone – building  its own sewage treatment plant.

Later in the day, Esquimalt’s Mayor, along with the Mayors of Langford, Colwood and View Royal had a separate meeting with the Minister.

Those Mayors – also looking into the possibility of their communities building separate treatment plants.

Polak says the Government is going to stick to its timelines for building a facility, whether it’s a central one or various  other ones.

It’s still unclear whether government funding would be impacted by municipalities going it alone.

http://www.cfax1070.com/News/Top-Stories/Local-mayors-talk-sewage-with-BC-environment-minis
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Seattle Times editorial below says its just procedural baloney holding up the CRD sewage plan. "Victoria’s approach to sewage treatment is as unthinkable as serving spotted-owl burgers at curling matches."
- Your comments: http://discussions.seattletimes.com/comments/2023787772
- Your letters to ST editor: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/northwestvoices/?from=stnv2
- Also reprinted in Times Colonist on 10 June

Seattle Times: Victoria sewage creates new stink
Procedural baloney is blocking construction of a sewage-treatment plant on Vancouver Island — meaning Victoria might keep fouling our shared waters with raw sewage after all.

Seattle Times Editorial
8 June 2014

IN this age of environmental sensitivity, the way Greater Victoria, B.C., disposes of its sewage is astounding. It runs a couple of pipes out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and flushes.

Everything gets mushed through a screen to make sure nothing recognizably icky floats to the surface, but that’s the extent of the sewage treatment for the southern end of Vancouver Island, home to about 300,000 people. Now, a decades-long effort to build a sewage-treatment plant is blocked by a local-government zoning squabble. It’s time for the grown-ups to say “enough already.”

British Columbia Premier Christy Clark needs to cut through the procedural baloney and order the plant’s construction. And to make sure that happens, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, sometimes hailed as the nation’s “greenest governor,” must elevate the matter to the level of international scandal, just as former Gov. Chris Gregoire did years ago as director of the state Department of Ecology.

Victoria’s approach to sewage treatment is as unthinkable as serving spotted-owl burgers at curling matches. Imagine: Every hour, Victoria and its environs pump a million gallons of raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca opposite Port Angeles.

In Washington, that might be considered an environmental crime. Officials here fret about every flush — they are proposing regulations that would make it illegal for commercial and recreational vessels to release treated waste into the sound. And federal regulators are pressuring the state into adopting standards for wastewater plants so tough they can’t be met with today’s technology.

All this while the Victoria area uses our shared waters as a great big toilet bowl.

Twenty years ago, Washington lawmakers called for a tourism boycott and Victoria’s unofficial mascot became a brown-suited gent who calls himself Mr. Floatie. Pressure from this state and the provincial government finally produced a plan to bring a sewage-treatment plant online by 2018. Down here, the furor died away. Except that two months ago the Esquimalt City Council refused to issue a permit for the new $721 million (U.S. dollars) facility. The provincial environment minister refused to overrule the town. Now years of planning might go down the drain.

The local planning authority, the Capital Regional District, will debate its next move at a meeting this week. But a staff analysis concludes the agency has no cost-effective options.

Blame it on a 21st century respect for process, combined with a 1950s respect for the environment. Some islanders say big new sewer taxes are unneeded because poop dissolves in the ocean the way nature intended. Yes, Victorians think we’re the ones being Victorian. We really don’t know how badly they are mucking American waters — no studies have measured Victoria’s direct contribution to the problems we see in the Sound.

But it doesn’t matter. It’s disgusting. No other metropolitan area in the developed world dumps untreated sewage in the ocean anymore, notes Pam Elardo, director of the King County Wastewater Treatment Division and an adviser to the Vancouver Island project.

So far, the Inslee administration is playing things right. It is working with King County on a formal request to Premier Clark, urging the provincial government to intervene. Previous Washington governors won commitments from previous premiers that something would be done. Inslee should stoke the fires of outrage again, and remind British Columbia that it is living in modern times.

http://seattletimes.com/html/editorials/2023787772_victoriasewageeditxml.html
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Victoria region's sewage bill could rise by $100 million

BILL CLEVERLEY
TIMES COLONIST (page A3)
JUNE 9, 2014

Capital Regional District staff are painting a grim picture of potential additional costs for local taxpayers as politicians grapple with how to kickstart the region’s stalled sewage-treatment program.

“It’s frightening,” Langford Coun. Denise Blackwell said of the costs.

Finding a new site for a central sewage treatment plant to replace Esquimalt’s McLoughlin Point could add $60 million to $100 million to the project’s $783-million price tag, CRD staff say in a report.

Under existing funding arrangements, the CRD has to have secondary treatment in place by 2018.

A CRD staff report notes that if the region has to find and get approval for a new site, because Esquimalt is blocking use of McLoughlin Point, the estimated completion year is 2020.

B.C. Environment Minister Mary Polak has said ongoing delays will place $501 million in funding for the project at risk.

With the senior government grants in place, local residents were looking at paying an average of between $232 to almost $400 a year for sewage treatment, depending on which municipality they live in. If the grants are lost, those figures will more than double, CRD staff say.

Oak Bay Mayor Nils Jensen said the estimates of increased costs are conservative.

While many opponents to the CRD’s Seaterra sewage plan argue that a cheaper option would be for the region to build several smaller plants instead a central one, staff say this model would be much more expensive.

Building six plants could cost $1.54 billion, says a report going to CRD directors Wednesday. A 12-plant system could have a capital cost of $1.85 billion.

If a household was expected to pay $200 per year under the proposed Seaterra program, it would have to pay $440 annually if the provincial and federal funding was lost and $802 or $950 per year if one of the two multi-plant systems is implemented, the report says.

A householder who was looking at paying $400 a year with government funding in place would have to pay $880 if the grants are lost, $1,690 for a six-plant option and $1,900 a year for a 12-plant option, it says.

Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins calls the numbers “fear mongering” and out of date.

She said she doesn’t believe the government grants are at risk.

Jensen said local taxpayers couldn’t afford the higher costs. He said Esquimalt was offered a “lucrative” amenity package to locate the plant at McLoughlin, and the region should do everything it can to push ahead with its original plan.

“They [Esquimalt taxpayers] have been sold a bill of goods that makes them believe that they can do sewage treatment for very little. … The studies that have been done by the CRD and the numbers that have been put forward are the only real numbers that exist,” Jensen said.

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/victoria-region-s-sewage-bill-could-rise-by-100-million-1.1122064
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Capital Regional District presses on with sewage-treatment plan

BILL CLEVERLEY
TIMES COLONIST (Page A1, frontpage)
JUNE 10, 2014

Far from hitting the stop button on the Seaterra sewage treatment megaproject, Capital Regional District staff are recommending pressing fast forward to keep the project alive.

“I’m a bit frustrated,” Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins said of the recommendation. “When does no mean no? And when is it that we’re going to take the initiative to say we have to change course here?”

After B.C. Environment Minister Mary Polak declined to overturn Esquimalt’s refusal to rezone McLoughlin Point for a sewage-treatment plant, Desjardins said it was time for a re-think of the $783-million project.

In a resolution slated to be debated Wednesday, she proposes suspending Seaterra, the commission overseeing sewage treatment implementation, until Jan. 15 to allow the CRD board and member municipalities time to consider other options. She also is calling for all Seaterra-related projects to be terminated by Sept. 30.

But CRD staff are recommending instead that the region start looking for a new site for a centralized treatment plant while also examining the costs of building several treatment plants. They also suggest revisiting the issue with Polak now that Seaterra has selected a group to build a plant and has a plant design.

Victoria Coun. Geoff Young, who chairs the CRD’s liquid waste management committee, said all options have to be examined, and quickly.

“What we have to do is look at how we can move forward and there are a whole bunch of different ways of possibly moving forward.”

To expedite finding an alternate site, CRD staff suggest conducting a competition in which municipalities and First Nations would be asked if they have a potential site available and, if so, what they would want for an amenity package.

CRD staff are estimating the additional costs of moving from McLoughlin to a different location — if one can be found — could be between $60 million and $100 million.

A host municipality or First Nation could stand to gain financially. The CRD had offered Esquimalt an amenity package including oceanfront walkways, a million-dollar bike and path system on Lyall Street, public art, bike lanes, and road improvements to rezone the McLoughlin site. The CRD originally estimated the package to be $13 million. That ballooned to $20 million when the true cost of barging construction materials, as requested by Esquimalt, was factored in. Young said that’s enough money to write a $1,000 cheque to every Esquimalt citizen. A new host community could expect something similar.

Meanwhile, the CRD is facing a number of deadlines. To meet federal wastewater regulations, it is required to have a secondary treatment plant in place by 2015. It has until the end of this month to apply for an extension to 2020, but to make that application, it has to have a plan detailing how it expects to comply with the regulations.

Without McLoughlin as a treatment plant site, there essentially is no plan. That would mean that come Jan. 1, the CRD could be subject to fines of up to $500,000 a day under the Fisheries Act. CRD staff recommend applying for the extension, while making it clear that there could be an amendment to the plan.

The CRD has to have a plant running by 2018 to meet federal and provincial government funding deadlines or risk losing $501 million in senior government grants. A CRD staff report says having to find a new centralized treatment plant site would push completion to 2020 and if a decentralized option is chosen completion could be pushed to 2023.

If municipalities decide to build their own treatment plants, the funding agreements would be invalidated, the report says.

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/capital-regional-district-presses-on-with-sewage-treatment-plan-1.1122048

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LETTERS


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Sewage treatment model flawed (Lloyd)
http://www.vicnews.com/opinion/letters/262648071.html
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Victoria sewage no threat to Seattle (Platts)
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/letters/victoria-sewage-no-threat-to-seattle-1.1126115
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Time to get serious about sewage plant location (Porteous)
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/letters/time-to-get-serious-about-sewage-plant-location-1.1126113
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Local politicians should risk being fined (Roger)
http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/letters/local-politicians-should-risk-being-fined-1.1126117

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SEND IN YOUR LETTERS!
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