April 27, 2009

The City of Victoria and surrounding municipalities are developing plans to treat their raw sewage and discontinue dumping the unprocessed waste into the ocean.

Sewage system for Greater Victoria communities a 20-year project, official says

Shannon Moneo

correspondent

Building a sewage system to serve Greater Victoria will be a 20-year project, said the chair of the municipal committee leading the proposed venture.

“With a public facility like this, it evolves over many, many years,” said Judy Brownoff of the Capital Regional District’s (CRD’s) core area liquid waste management committee and a District of Saanich councillor.

“We have to make sure we put in a system that is adaptable and flexible for the future and that is built to capacity.”

Local politicians from area municipalities sit on the committee and represent about 300,000 residents.

Sewage from those communities is currently screened to remove anything larger than 6 millimetres and is then discharged through long outfall pipes into the ocean.

Critics claim that a new sewage treatment system – with an estimated price tag of $1.2 billion to $2 billion – isn’t necessary because the discharge is 99.97 per cent water and fast-moving ocean currents quickly disperse the remainder.

But a report found toxins contaminating sea beds around the outfall and it prompted the Ministry of Environment in 2006 to ask the CRD to investigate sewage upgrading.

Since then, the committee has been busy.

The triple bottom line principle is guiding the planning, Brownoff said.

Instead of focusing solely on the economic bottom line, the environmental and social implications of a new sewage treatment facility are being eyeballed.

The environment ministry set timelines for the project, which have been difficult to achieve because some municipalities are questioning the proposed system.

Nevertheless, by the end of May, new project consultants will be hired.

By October, sites for between four and 11 treatment plants are to be finalized, Brownoff said.

By the end of the year, a business plan will be submitted to the provincial government which will fund one-third of the project’s construction costs.

The federal government and the participating municipalities will split the remaining two-thirds.

Development cost charges may also be used to finance the project, Brownoff said

Likely plant sites are Clover Point in Victoria, Macaulay Point or McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt and Haro Woods in Saanich.

Several other areas are likely to get plants too.

Three options for configuring the facilities, all of them with resource recovery capabilities, are being floated, Brownoff said.

The first would use three treatment plants with one wet weather flow plant at Clover Point.

Organic energy and phosphorus would be recovered at two plants, while heat energy recovery would be accomplished by using effluent from all three plants.

Early estimates peg the cost at $1.2 billion with an annual operating cost of $23.5 million, offset by $3.6-million in annual resource recovery revenues.

Option two features five treatment plants, which will all recover heat energy using effluent, and one wet weather flow plant.

One plant will recover organic energy and phosphorus.

Sewage area boundaries will be modified. The cost is $1.6 billion and the annual operating cost is $29 million, while resource recovery revenues should reach $7.3 million.

The final option has 10 treatment plants and one wet weather flow plant.

Heat energy would be recovered at all 11 facilities, while two plants would recover phosphorous and organic energy.

The cost is estimated at $2 billion with an annual operating budget of $33.4 million and recovery revenue at $8.3 million per year.

The treatment plants will use ultraviolet light or ozone to disinfect the liquid waste following treatment.

The treated water could be reused for toilets or irrigation, or be directed through a heat exchange system.

“As the system evolves, we’ll be able to generate heat or biogas with the sewage system,” Brownoff said.

Consultants have proposed that some of the post-treatment biosolid sludge could be shipped to cement kilns in Vancouver where it would replace coal as fuel.

Other uses for the sludge include a proposal to use it as fertilizer on a CRD willow tree plantation, where the trees would be harvested and mulched to create fuel.

Meanwhile, Responsible Sewage Treatment Victoria, a group of scientists, engineers and health-care professionals, continues to advocate for the existing natural treatment system bolstered with improved source controls and infrastructure upgrades.

Led by retired provincial health officer Dr. Shaun Peck, the group’s message is that the $2 billion cost is exorbitant and unnecessary.

Interestingly, Brownoff said that in 2000, a secondary treatment facility was built on the Saanich Peninsula and as technology progresses, additions have resulted in a plant that’s almost at the tertiary treatment level.

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