June 11, 2009 in City

Victoria, B.C., to stop sending untreated sewage into strait

Practice fomented cross-border tension
Phuong Le Associated Press
 
File Associated Press photo

James Skwarok is embraced by Terry Bieman, wearing a Mr. Floatie costume, as they prepare for the first Victoria Toilet Regatta in Victoria, B.C., in 2005. Skwarok was running for mayor as Mr. Floatie.
(Full-size photo)

How it works

Now: Sewage from the Victoria area is screened for solid objects larger than about a quarter inch, but it isn’t treated beyond that. The wastewater is pumped out of two outfalls that run 213 feet deep and a mile into the strait.

Later: The capital district’s sewage committee voted to build four treatment plants that will take 10 years to complete. The plants would be built to secondary treatment levels or beyond. Municipal wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. are generally required by law to use primary and secondary treatment.

SEATTLE – After years of bad publicity – including a campaign by “Mr. Floatie” – the British Columbia capital of Victoria plans to stop pouring millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the marine waters between Vancouver Island and Washington state.

Regional politicians last week approved a $1.2 billion plan to build four treatment plants to handle about 34 million gallons of raw sewage that Victoria and six suburbs pump into the Strait of Juan de Fuca each day. The cities are home to about 300,000 people.

“It’s the first time we’ve had the region say, ‘It’s the direction we’re going to go in,’ ” said Christianne Wilhelmson, with the Georgia Strait Alliance, which has pushed for sewage treatment for years.

Environmentalists say the treatment should improve the marine environment and public health. Others, however, argue that the money could be better spent elsewhere, and that sewage pumped into the strait is sufficiently diluted by water and currents. The strait separates the island from Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and leads to Puget Sound.

For years, the effluent issue has been a sore point on both sides of the border, contrasting with Victoria’s self-promotion as a tourist center, a gateway to the wilderness forests and rugged marine coast of Vancouver Island, and a prim and proper city.

“It’s the only city in Canada where people resolutely cling to the notion that Victorian waste is different from other waste,” said Lara Tessaro, a staff attorney with Ecojustice in Canada.

Efforts to shame politicians into adopting sewage treatment were marked by a humorous yet failed attempt by Mr. Floatie – the 7-foot-tall brown-clad mascot for POOP, People Opposed to Outfall Pollution – to run for mayor of Victoria.

Environmentalists say untreated sewage contains toxic chemicals, heavy metals and other contaminants that pollute waters and harm aquatic life. It’s also one of many sources contaminating the region’s killer whales, they say.

In 2006, the British Columbia government ordered the Victoria area to develop a sewage treatment plan.

A cleaner image couldn’t come at a better time for British Columbia, which is hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

State Sen. Kevin Ranker, whose district is in Washington’s San Juan Islands a few miles to the southeast, said treatment is long overdue. “It will be a real shame if we bring hundreds of thousands of people to the region for the Olympics and you have that sort of environmental scar,” he said. “This is an easy fix.”

© Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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