CRD SEWAGE NEWS THIS WEEK
- Public asked for input on Victoria-area sewage-plant sites
- Editorial: Have your say on sewage
- CUPE Sewage treatment consultations happening in the CRD
- Choosing new sewage site begins with well attended event
- Burchill interview on CFAX 29 April
- CTV News interview of ARESST chair Burchill
- Westside identifies potential wastewater treatment and resource recovery sites
- Capital Regional District sewage levy concerns mayors
- Bombshell letter from Langford says stop Seaterra taxes
LETTERS
- Offshore facility could solve sewage problem (Christmas)
- Let the province build sewage-treatment plant (Day)
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Public asked for input on Victoria-area sewage-plant sites
Bill Cleverley
Times Colonist
April 28, 2015
Victoria, Saanich and Oak Bay will launch an intensive public process Wednesday looking for input on where to build a sewage-treatment plant.
It’s an ambitious agenda. The hope is to get public buy-in on where a sewage-treatment plant or plants should be sited by the end of June.
It took four years for the Capital Regional District to settle on Esquimalt’s McLoughlin Point as a site for a regional sewage-treatment plant. That plan went off the rails last year, when Esquimalt refused to rezone the site and the province declined to overturn the decision.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps concedes the hunt for a site won’t be easy.
“I anticipate that it’s going to be a hard slog. There’s going to be some hard conversations. But I’m hell bent and determined that we meet this deadline,” Helps told the Times Colonist editorial board Monday.
Helps is chairwoman of both the East Side Select Committee and the Capital Regional District’s Core Area Liquid Waste Committee
“Part of what we need to do is re-frame the conversation, [from] ‘Ooh, yuck not in my backyard,’ to: ‘Yes, please in my backyard because I can see the benefits for the long term,’ ” she said.
The McLoughlin Point plan failed because the site was selected before being presented to the public for input, Helps said. This time, the plan is to ask the public for help in selecting both site and technology.
Since the McLoughlin option went down the toilet, local governments split into two parallel groups to explore options: an east-side group composed of Victoria, Saanich and Oak Bay, and a west-side group comprising Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood, Langford and the Songhees First Nation.
While the west-side group has been consulting with the public for months, the dialogue on the east side begins Wednesday at the Royal B.C. Museum.
Helps said Saanich, Oak Bay and Victoria have each agreed to submit by May 6 a number of “technically feasible” sites for sewage treatment for consideration by the public.
“Then those will be made public as part of the public-engagement process, where in Saanich, Oak Bay and Victoria, respectively, there will be workshops where the public rolls up their sleeves with the sites that have been identified by their council and starts to weigh criteria and helps to narrow down those sites,” Helps said.
The hope is that the west-side process will come together with the east-side process and sites will be identified by the end of June, Helps said.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants are riding on the success of the process.
The CRD’s sewage-treatment project has a budget of $788 million, of which the federal government has committed $253 million.
“The potential consequences of not meeting that [site selection] deadline is that the funding starts to disappear,” Helps said.
Helps is under no illusion that the process will be easy, and acknowledges there is “absolutely not” a sewage-treatment site that everyone will endorse.
Wednesday’s meeting begins at 7 p.m. and will involve both a briefing and a workshop.
http://www.timescolonist.com/
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TIMES COLONIST
APRIL 29, 2015
One of the factors that killed the proposed massive sewage-treatment project for the capital region was the perception that the plan was foisted on the public without sufficient consultation. Municipalities trying to meet federal and provincial funding deadlines are determined that won’t happen again.
Two efforts are underway to draw up new plans and find new sites to handle the region’s sewage. While substantial opposition still exists to changing the way we treat our sewage, both the province and the federal governments insist we stop discharging it untreated into the ocean. That’s highly unlikely to change.
Victoria, Saanich and Oak Bay have formed an east-side group to develop plans and solutions; on the west side, Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood, Langford and the Songhees First Nation have banded together.
A key component is the intensive process in seeking public input. For the east-side group, that starts today at 7 p.m. with a briefing and workshop at the Royal B.C. Museum.
You don’t want a sewage plant in your backyard? Here’s your chance to say so, but it would be helpful if you had an idea where such a plant could be built. Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, in a meeting with the Times Colonist editorial board this week, was adamant the officials sincerely want to hear from the public.
It took four years for the Capital Regional District to settle on McLoughlin Point as the site for the sewage-treatment plant. The mayor says the hope is that the west-side process will come together with the east-side process to identify sites by the end of June.
Helps, who chairs the East Side Select Committee as well as the CRD’s Core Area Liquid Waste Committee, is under no illusion that the hunt for a site or sites will be easy. “I anticipate that it’s going to be a hard slog,” she said.
There’s work to be done and the door is open for discussion. There’s little chance the process will come up with a plan everyone will like, but if the public gets involved, it should develop a plan that most people can accept.
http://www.timescolonist.com/
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CUPE Sewage treatment consultations happening in the CRD
VICTORIA - New public consultations for the development of sewage treatment are underway in the Capital Regional District (CRD). Select Committees for the Eastside and Westside of the CRD’s Core Area are conducting separate consultation processes and inviting public participation. At the end of consultations, the two committees will come together to discuss solutions that could work across the entire Core Area.
CUPE members and others who support publicly owned and operated sewage treatment have a number of options to get involved and be part of discussions.
On the Eastside, a kickoff event will be held on Wednesday, April 29 at the Royal BC Museum in the Clifford Carl Hall, 675 Belleville St., starting at 7 p.m. The meeting is open to the public and will have both a briefing and workshop component. The Eastside Select Committee will be hosting the future events as well. More information is available at www.crd.bc.ca/Eastside.
On the Westside, the Westside Select Committee will be hosting Innovation Days at Royal Roads University, April 28-30. The three-day event will feature seven presentations by technology companies who recently responded to the Committee’s Request for Technical Information. Presentations are scheduled to last about one hour, including a short question and answer period.
Invitations were sent out for this event. However, additional attendees may be accommodated, but seating at the venue is limited and is available on a first come, first served basis.
More information about this and other consultations on the westside can be found at www.westsidesolutions.ca.
Why public ownership and operation matters
There are many arguments in favour of public ownership and operation.
Protecting the environment and public control are linked. Public control means the public interest, and not private corporate interests, will drive decisions. Local government decisions are most often done in public and are much more accountable and transparent than those made by private corporations. And in the end, environmental risk and damage always end up as a public concern and responsibility.
Privatization costs more. Public-private partnerships or P3s are a taxpayer rip-off. They cost more than public operation. Private corporations take on P3 projects to make money. They answer to shareholders, not the public or taxpayers. Private financing costs more and the “mark up” for taking on risk and meeting profit targets adds significantly to the cost of P3 projects. British Columbia’s Auditor General, Carol Bellringer recently offered strong evidence of this in her annual report where she found that government is paying nearly twice as much for borrowing through P3s as it would if it borrowed the money itself.
Taxpayers “run the risk” in the end. If things go wrong, private corporations can walk away. Government and taxpayers cannot. We end up with the problem and ultimately pay to clean up the economic and sometimes, environmental mess.
P3S lock us into decades-long contracts. They lock our local governments and communities in to 30-or-more-year contracts. This limits current and future generations having a say in a key part of their community. Multi-decade contracts also limit how flexible our communities can be in terms of using new technologies or responding to new information.
P3 deals are very complex and secretive. P3 deals are secretive and negotiated behind closed doors. By the time they are finished, the contracts are huge and incomprehensible even to the staff of cities that are “purchasing” the service.
Focusing on local employment and economic development. When private corporations run the show contracts often go to big corporations and we lose local investment, tax resources and jobs. We want local government to be able to offer the next generations challenging jobs that pay decently and allow the students of today to stay in our communities and have successful careers. Investing in public services is part of that.
http://www.cupe.bc.ca/news/
Westside Solutions press release
May 01, 2015
Victoria, BC– A potential list of 20 technically feasible sites for wastewater treatment and resource recovery facilities in the westside communities of Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood and Langford has been compiled by the Westside Solutions technical committee.
The sites – which will not be identified by location at the present time because several of them are privately owned – were selected based on their size and their proximity to existing trunk lines, potential outfalls, neighbourhoods, and existing developments that could take advantage of resource recovery opportunities.
“This is a positive step forward, but we have more work to do yet,” said Esquimalt Mayor and Westside Solutions Co-Chair Barbara Desjardins. “The Select Committee is reviewing the report and will combine it with ongoing input from our public engagement process. These parallel processes will help us arrive at a technically viable and publically acceptable solution for wastewater treatment and resource recovery in the westside. ”
Highlights of the technical report:
each westside community has at least one site that accommodate all their own municipal wastewater flows
some potential sites are large enough to handle all flows from westside communities as well as those from Victoria and Saanich which flow into the Macaulay outfall through the northern section of the North West Trunk
several sites meet the requirements to process biosolids on-site in addition to wastewater treatment
as indicated in the public survey, the public has stated a preference for tertiary treatment that reuses treated effluent prior to disposal
The Westside Solutions Select Committee will host public roundtables on May 6, 9 and 13 to further refine the criteria for potential wastewater treatment sites. This roundtable dialogue will explore the potential benefits, tradeoffs and conditions for acceptance of siting wastewater treatment and resource recovery facilities within westside communities. The roundtable will provide invaluable information for municipal decision makers who will be faced with choosing a site in the coming months.
The primary goal of the Westside Solutions process is to create a unified, regional wastewater treatment and resource recovery system, working in partnership with the Eastside Select Committee. A joint Westside/ Eastside presentation of site options is tentatively planned for June 2015.
-30-
For media inquiries, please contact:
Kristin Quayle, Communications Coordinator
CRD Corporate Communications
Tel: 250.360.3623
Sandra Russell, Communications Manager
City of Colwood
Tel: 250.478.5999
Cell: 778.677.5345
Ritchie Morrison, Communications
Township of Esquimalt
Tel: 250.414.7122
https://www.crd.bc.ca/
VICTORIA - New public consultations for the development of sewage treatment are underway in the Capital Regional District (CRD). Select Committees for the Eastside and Westside of the CRD’s Core Area are conducting separate consultation processes and inviting public participation. At the end of consultations, the two committees will come together to discuss solutions that could work across the entire Core Area.
CUPE members and others who support publicly owned and operated sewage treatment have a number of options to get involved and be part of discussions.
On the Eastside, a kickoff event will be held on Wednesday, April 29 at the Royal BC Museum in the Clifford Carl Hall, 675 Belleville St., starting at 7 p.m. The meeting is open to the public and will have both a briefing and workshop component. The Eastside Select Committee will be hosting the future events as well. More information is available at www.crd.bc.ca/Eastside.
On the Westside, the Westside Select Committee will be hosting Innovation Days at Royal Roads University, April 28-30. The three-day event will feature seven presentations by technology companies who recently responded to the Committee’s Request for Technical Information. Presentations are scheduled to last about one hour, including a short question and answer period.
Invitations were sent out for this event. However, additional attendees may be accommodated, but seating at the venue is limited and is available on a first come, first served basis.
More information about this and other consultations on the westside can be found at www.westsidesolutions.ca.
Why public ownership and operation matters
There are many arguments in favour of public ownership and operation.
Protecting the environment and public control are linked. Public control means the public interest, and not private corporate interests, will drive decisions. Local government decisions are most often done in public and are much more accountable and transparent than those made by private corporations. And in the end, environmental risk and damage always end up as a public concern and responsibility.
Privatization costs more. Public-private partnerships or P3s are a taxpayer rip-off. They cost more than public operation. Private corporations take on P3 projects to make money. They answer to shareholders, not the public or taxpayers. Private financing costs more and the “mark up” for taking on risk and meeting profit targets adds significantly to the cost of P3 projects. British Columbia’s Auditor General, Carol Bellringer recently offered strong evidence of this in her annual report where she found that government is paying nearly twice as much for borrowing through P3s as it would if it borrowed the money itself.
Taxpayers “run the risk” in the end. If things go wrong, private corporations can walk away. Government and taxpayers cannot. We end up with the problem and ultimately pay to clean up the economic and sometimes, environmental mess.
P3S lock us into decades-long contracts. They lock our local governments and communities in to 30-or-more-year contracts. This limits current and future generations having a say in a key part of their community. Multi-decade contracts also limit how flexible our communities can be in terms of using new technologies or responding to new information.
P3 deals are very complex and secretive. P3 deals are secretive and negotiated behind closed doors. By the time they are finished, the contracts are huge and incomprehensible even to the staff of cities that are “purchasing” the service.
Focusing on local employment and economic development. When private corporations run the show contracts often go to big corporations and we lose local investment, tax resources and jobs. We want local government to be able to offer the next generations challenging jobs that pay decently and allow the students of today to stay in our communities and have successful careers. Investing in public services is part of that.
http://www.cupe.bc.ca/news/
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Choosing new sewage site begins with well attended event
Ryan Price
Ryan Price
CFAX News
April 30, 2015
April 30, 2015
There was a big turnout Wednesday night at the Royal BC Museum, for the first in a series of open houses asking the public to help pick a site for sewage treatment in Greater Victoria.
The "Eastside Community Dialog" covers Victoria, Saanich and Oak Bay. There's a parallel "Westside Community Dialog" happening for the other municipalities involved.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, who also chairs the CRD sewage committee, says they're doing the opposite of what happened last time - when the CRD chose the McLoughlin Point site and then presented it to the public for reaction. She says the events are also about "reconciliation" between the CRD and the public.
Helps says there will be a series of these dialog session over the next few weeks. She says their deadline to identified potential new sites for sewage treatment is June.
The "Eastside Community Dialog" covers Victoria, Saanich and Oak Bay. There's a parallel "Westside Community Dialog" happening for the other municipalities involved.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, who also chairs the CRD sewage committee, says they're doing the opposite of what happened last time - when the CRD chose the McLoughlin Point site and then presented it to the public for reaction. She says the events are also about "reconciliation" between the CRD and the public.
Helps says there will be a series of these dialog session over the next few weeks. She says their deadline to identified potential new sites for sewage treatment is June.
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Burchill interview on CFAX 29 April
Brian made a great interview this morning with Stanford and it starts at the 44:30 minute mark in the recording:
https://soundcloud.com/frank-
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CTV News interview of ARESST chair Burchill
CTV News interview (at 13:30 minute mark in 11pm news video: http://vancouverisland.
At least CTV got ARESST's name right.
John
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Westside identifies potential wastewater treatment and resource recovery sites
Westsides technical report website: https://www.crd.bc.
Westsides technical report website: https://www.crd.bc.
Westside Solutions press release
May 01, 2015
Victoria, BC– A potential list of 20 technically feasible sites for wastewater treatment and resource recovery facilities in the westside communities of Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood and Langford has been compiled by the Westside Solutions technical committee.
The sites – which will not be identified by location at the present time because several of them are privately owned – were selected based on their size and their proximity to existing trunk lines, potential outfalls, neighbourhoods, and existing developments that could take advantage of resource recovery opportunities.
“This is a positive step forward, but we have more work to do yet,” said Esquimalt Mayor and Westside Solutions Co-Chair Barbara Desjardins. “The Select Committee is reviewing the report and will combine it with ongoing input from our public engagement process. These parallel processes will help us arrive at a technically viable and publically acceptable solution for wastewater treatment and resource recovery in the westside. ”
Highlights of the technical report:
each westside community has at least one site that accommodate all their own municipal wastewater flows
some potential sites are large enough to handle all flows from westside communities as well as those from Victoria and Saanich which flow into the Macaulay outfall through the northern section of the North West Trunk
several sites meet the requirements to process biosolids on-site in addition to wastewater treatment
as indicated in the public survey, the public has stated a preference for tertiary treatment that reuses treated effluent prior to disposal
The Westside Solutions Select Committee will host public roundtables on May 6, 9 and 13 to further refine the criteria for potential wastewater treatment sites. This roundtable dialogue will explore the potential benefits, tradeoffs and conditions for acceptance of siting wastewater treatment and resource recovery facilities within westside communities. The roundtable will provide invaluable information for municipal decision makers who will be faced with choosing a site in the coming months.
The primary goal of the Westside Solutions process is to create a unified, regional wastewater treatment and resource recovery system, working in partnership with the Eastside Select Committee. A joint Westside/ Eastside presentation of site options is tentatively planned for June 2015.
-30-
For media inquiries, please contact:
Kristin Quayle, Communications Coordinator
CRD Corporate Communications
Tel: 250.360.3623
Sandra Russell, Communications Manager
City of Colwood
Tel: 250.478.5999
Cell: 778.677.5345
Ritchie Morrison, Communications
Township of Esquimalt
Tel: 250.414.7122
https://www.crd.bc.ca/
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Capital Regional District sewage levy concerns mayors
Kevin Laird
Kevin Laird
Victoria News
May 1, 2015
Victoria and Esquimalt residents are in for some sticker shock when they open this year’s municipal tax notice.
While both Victoria and Esquimalt have announced a small two per cent tax increase, local taxpayers will see a 19 per cent increase from the Capital Regional District to cover the cost of the proposed sewage project.
Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins said collecting such a large amount from taxpayers is concerning.
She said there is no sewage project in place and even the numbers aren’t valid at this point.
“I believe we should be collecting to be prepared, but we shouldn’t be over collecting,” she said.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps is of two minds.
“The concerning piece is that we are collecting money for a project that we don’t know exactly what it is yet, [but] over collecting in one year means when push comes to shove and shovels go into the ground the costs won’t be so sudden to our taxpayers.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants are riding on the success of the sewage treatment program.
The CRD’s sewage-treatment project has a budget of $788 million, of which the federal government has committed $253 million.
When municipalities send out annual tax bills they collect for other agencies such as the CRD and school district, among others.
Desjardins said there are limits, though.
“We shouldn’t be collecting for sewage at this time. It’s frustrating.”
In the meantime, a potential list of 20 technically feasible sites for wastewater treatment and resource recovery facilities in the westside communities of Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood and Langford has been compiled by the Westside Solutions technical committee.
The sites – which will not be identified by location at the present time because several of them are privately owned – were selected based on their size and their proximity to existing trunk lines, potential outfalls, neighbourhoods, and existing developments that could take advantage of resource recovery opportunities.
“This is a positive step forward, but we have more work to do yet,” said Desjardins, co-chair of Westside Solutions.
“The Select Committee is reviewing the report and will combine it with ongoing input from our public engagement process. These parallel processes will help us arrive at a technically viable and publically acceptable solution for wastewater treatment and resource recovery in the westside. ”
http://www.vicnews.com/news/
May 1, 2015
Victoria and Esquimalt residents are in for some sticker shock when they open this year’s municipal tax notice.
While both Victoria and Esquimalt have announced a small two per cent tax increase, local taxpayers will see a 19 per cent increase from the Capital Regional District to cover the cost of the proposed sewage project.
Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins said collecting such a large amount from taxpayers is concerning.
She said there is no sewage project in place and even the numbers aren’t valid at this point.
“I believe we should be collecting to be prepared, but we shouldn’t be over collecting,” she said.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps is of two minds.
“The concerning piece is that we are collecting money for a project that we don’t know exactly what it is yet, [but] over collecting in one year means when push comes to shove and shovels go into the ground the costs won’t be so sudden to our taxpayers.”
Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants are riding on the success of the sewage treatment program.
The CRD’s sewage-treatment project has a budget of $788 million, of which the federal government has committed $253 million.
When municipalities send out annual tax bills they collect for other agencies such as the CRD and school district, among others.
Desjardins said there are limits, though.
“We shouldn’t be collecting for sewage at this time. It’s frustrating.”
In the meantime, a potential list of 20 technically feasible sites for wastewater treatment and resource recovery facilities in the westside communities of Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood and Langford has been compiled by the Westside Solutions technical committee.
The sites – which will not be identified by location at the present time because several of them are privately owned – were selected based on their size and their proximity to existing trunk lines, potential outfalls, neighbourhoods, and existing developments that could take advantage of resource recovery opportunities.
“This is a positive step forward, but we have more work to do yet,” said Desjardins, co-chair of Westside Solutions.
“The Select Committee is reviewing the report and will combine it with ongoing input from our public engagement process. These parallel processes will help us arrive at a technically viable and publically acceptable solution for wastewater treatment and resource recovery in the westside. ”
http://www.vicnews.com/news/
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Bombshell letter from Langford says stop Seaterra taxes
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LETTERS:
Offshore facility could solve sewage problem (Christmas)
TIMES COLONIST
MAY 3, 2015
Re: “Have your say on sewage,” editorial, April 29.
More than a year ago, I wrote a letter to the editor in which I proposed a solution for the Capital Regional District with regards to its sewage-disposal dilemma. I suggested that as an alternative to a land-based facility, the CRD should consider a floating offshore facility.
A small, double-hulled mothballed tanker could be purchased and refitted with sewage and sludge treatment equipment, then permanently anchored well off-shore, with sewage feeder pipes laid on the seafloor. This would eliminate virtually all shore-based facility issues, namely expensive site purchase, ugly industrial buildings, odour issues, NIMBY-ism, lengthy sludge pipelines, equipment access, etc. It would simply look like another ship riding at anchor, perfectly normal for a port city. I’m also willing to bet it would be far less expensive than the other options being debated.
Then, shortly after that, while reading through the marine news website gCaptain.com, I discovered an article about a company in Norway — Enviro Nor AS — that was doing exactly that: converting used tankers into wastewater treatment vessels designed for small coastal cities with populations of up to 300,000. Sounds like a perfect fit to me.
Now I understand the CRD, in what appears to be an act of desperation, is actively seeking public input on this persistent issue. Fine then, here it is — go to gCaptain.com and search for “wastewater treatment vessel.”
You’re welcome.
Ernie Christmas
Victoria
The Reliever - good name for a sewage treatment plant ship!
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Let the province build sewage-treatment plant (Day)
TIMES COLONIST
APRIL 29, 2015
Re: “Public asked for sewage plant sites,” April 28.
Once again, our local politicians are going to get “public input” on the location of a sewage plant or two.
But these folks have never stood up for us, the local taxpayers, by asking for public input on the seminal question: Do we want land-based sewage treatment?
Scientists have clearly said such a system isn’t needed; our current ocean-based disposal works fine. All the local politicians can say in defence of wasting all this money is that the province made us do it.
Well, if the province wants it, let the province build it. We elect mayors and councillors to look after our local interests. They should do their job.
Mike Day
Saanich
http://www.timescolonist.com/
