CRD directors win backing for sludge tour around Europe

A tour that could take some Capital Regional District directors on a trip to visit sewage-sludge processing facilities around Europe and North America has been approved at the committee level.

The issue will be decided at next week’s meeting of the CRD board.

Saanich Mayor Richard Atwell voted against the tour at Wednesday’s meeting of the Integrated Resource Management Advisory Committee. The tour is intended to help directors decide on a method of treating sludge coming from the region’s $765-million sewage-treatment project.

“There’s very little value for elected officials to be going on a tour like this,” Atwell said. “What it does is I think it biases them, it’s not very objective.”

He said he could support consultants and staff taking such a trip.

“If they can’t get the information from literature, they’ll actually want to go and visit plants.”

Atwell said there are plants on the tour list that process only a single waste stream, even though the whole point of the exercise is to look at technologies that process more than one.

Sooke Mayor Maja Tait, the committee’s chairwoman, supported sending the issue along to the full CRD board and said it arose out of a discussion in June. She said the concept of the tour was discussed back then and direction came out of that to see what it would entail.

The tour would be part of making an “informed decision” on dealing with sludge, Tait said. She likened it on a smaller scale to a public hearing at the local level where councillors are expected to view the properties involved.

“This is of tremendous importance to our region,” she said of the sewage project.

Tait said that chairing the Integrated Resource Management Committee puts her on the list to be part of the trip, should it be approved. A total of five people would go, she said.

A report about the tour mentions an October visit to eight locations in Europe, including in Germany, Spain, Belgium and France, and perhaps three North American stops — depending on what is learned in Europe.

Costs for the European leg are estimated to be $8,500 per person, while the North American leg is estimated at $4,000 per person.