Our dump, sewer, mess, cup of tea

Dear editor: Visiting our dump again, I drive past about 12 different ponds filled with who knows what chemicals and see the top of a manhole with a blue pipe on top.

This must be the overflow portion of the ponds since every drop of precipitation needs to be dealt with and flow somewhere. After our precipitation seeps down through the dump layers of who know what chemicals and bacteria, it flows out into the several ponds. From these ponds, we can assume that the sanitary sewer system accepts the overflow. This overflow of chemical soup will flow straight through the sewer treatment plant and into our Okanagan Lake system.

Our sewer treatment plant is specific to removing solids and phosphates as well as nitrates (feces and urine derivatives; i.e. fertilizers only) the rest is not removed and stays in suspension in Mother Nature’s solvent (i.e. water).

In Kelowna, all this happens on the KLO sewer treatment plant and the pipe leads out into the Okanagan Lake at KLO.

Now we come to our cup of tea. If you live south of KLO — the Okanagan Lake flows from the north to the south — you will enjoy your cup of tea made with the chemicals, bacteria and other good things derived from dump juices because your water intake is at Cedar Creek pumping station.

If you think this is exciting then consider that West Kelowna also dumps sewer plant effluent into the Okanagan Lake. Then drive to Penticton and notice that this city also dumps sewer plant effluent into the Okanagan River (you may opt to float down the sewer effluent on a hot day). After you leave Penticton, each little town, if they have sewer treatment plant, will do the same, add to the river flow with treated sewer effluent.

By the time the Americans receive our treated sewer effluent, you can only imagine how good your cup of tea would taste. By the time this soup reaches the Pacific Ocean, you must marvel that any fish would want to approach the river inlet to come up and spawn.

If you consider global warming an item to worry about, I believe we should worry about our cup of tea first — without the tea, who cares how warm we are.

Jorgen Hansen

Kelowna