The politics of sewage is a capital disgrace
Victoria: Yet another treatment centre plan circles the drain ... it’s time to get off the pot
While delivering a speech in Bellingham last fall, I fielded a question that comes up pretty much every time I address an audience south of the border.
“When are you folks in Victoria going to start treating your sewage?”
The shame of my hometown — dumping millions of litres of untreated sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca every day.
Or, as columnist Joel Connelly wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer 25 years ago, “the B. C. capital believes in using an international waterway as its toilet.”
For a long time, my answer to the question was a variation on: “We have a long- term plan and I expect we’ll get around to implementing it one of these days.”
Lately, it has been possible to be more reassuring. “We’re doing it,” I told that Bellingham audience. “Treatment is at hand.”
The Capital Regional District had established an overseer for the project, the delightfully named Seaterra, conjuring up images of sea breezes and waterfront walks as opposed to, well, sewage. There was a budget, albeit a suspiciously precise $ 782.7 million — considering how they have yet to call tenders for construction.
When flying in to Victoria on the float plane or helijet, one could see that clearing was underway on the site for the treatment plant at the entrance to the harbour.
But all that was placed in jeopardy earlier this spring when Esquimalt council turned down $ 20 million worth of “incentives” and instead voted to block construction at the aforementioned site. Stymied, the regional district pleaded with the provincial government to impose the treatment plant on Esquimalt, council be damned.
But late last month, Environment Minister Mary Polak declined to step in, recognizing the hornet’s nest for what it was. Instead, she reminded the region that it is under order from both the provincial and federal governments to start treating its sewage. Moreover, it risks losing a half- billion dollars worth of cost- sharing commitments from senior governments, as those expire in three years or so.
The latter prospect had local government leaders meeting with her on Friday, hoping to find an opening to save the project. But meanwhile, the capital region news media have been reporting the potential fallout:
Back to the drawing board with no obvious options. Cost to rise by $ 100 million and maybe more. Local ratepayers on the hook for the entire tab if the province and the feds take their scarce dollars to a place where they would be more appreciated.
For the proposed sewage treatment plant is far from the most welcome cost- shared project in the country.
The recent faltering has been celebrated by a mixed bag of opponents. Those who insist that the natural action of the strait does an acceptable job of treating the sewage. Those who maintain that this project is the wrong one. Those who fear the damn thing will be coming to their neighbourhood. Mea culpa on the latter: one of the alternative sites is near the end of my block.
Then there are the Americans, who’ve been remarkably patient about Victoria’s failure to do what their cities have been obliged to do by law for decades.
Take Port Angeles, opposite Victoria on the Strait. A fraction of the population of the capital region. But its waste- water treatment plant has been in place so long that they are looking at a replacement.
The reaction from south of the border was not long in coming. Connelly supplied a blow- byblow account on the Post- Intelligencer website of his decadeslong fight to shame Victoria into action.
The Seattle Times editorialized what sounded like a threat. “Twenty years ago Washington lawmakers called for a boycott,” it noted, before urging Gov. Jay Inslee to “stoke the fires of outrage again and remind B. C. that it is living in modern times.”
Inslee himself weighed in a few days later with a letter reminding Premier Christy Clark how Washingtonians had every reason to think they had a deal.
Back in 1993, Premier Mike Harcourt committed to sewage treatment with Gov. Mike Lowry. Premier Gordon Campbell renewed the promise with Gov. Christine Gregoire in exchange for her support of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
But my favourite bit of feedback was from my friends at KUOW, the Seattle radio station where I have provided weekly reports of Canadian news since the 1980s. “Is it time to bring back Mr. Floatie?” they asked.
Now we’re talking. He was of course the remarkably effective protester who mock dramatized the need for sewage treatment by dressing up as a huge brown, well, floatie, topped with a jaunty white sailor’s cap.
“I’m Mr. Floatie, the ocean poo,” he would sing at public events. “If you live in Victoria, I come from you.” Other cities had a town fool. Only the B. C. capital had a town stool.
Or it did for a time, anyway. Mr. Floatie retired a couple years back, concluding the fight was won. His last public appearance, near as I can tell, was in honour of Rob Shaw, when he left the sewage- treatment beat at the Victoria Times Colonist earlier this year to take a job as political reporter for The Vancouver Sun.
But before the Americans seriously revive the threat of a tourism boycott, maybe a comeback is in order. “Hey Victoria — it’s time to get off the pot, “he might say.