In the Capital Regional District, we have for many years thrown away tons of non-differentiated garbage and piled it up in the formerly pristine valley of Hartland. For many years also we have used lots of water and thrown sewage back into the Juan da Fuca Strait, hardly sieved out of its grossest solids. We generated all this directly at home, in backyard gardens and on front lawns, and indirectly through community services, industries, markets, and other business.
Four decades ago, we began to worry about the effect of solid waste on the ecosystems. We were also told that at current rates, Hartland could not last for much longer. Ensuing recycling, reusing, reducing product use and waste extended the landfill ‘s lifespan somewhat. The total costs were not and still are not clear to the public. Large scale composting of domestic waste was recently proposed. While this would further extend Hartland’s lifespan, it will still be full by 2040 or 2050.
Meanwhile, we keep on using large daily quantities of water, perhaps with some guilty conscience for our wastefulness and some wishful thinking of reducing use and producing less sewage.
A few years ago, a few “ecological” Americans threatened the tourist industry in Victoria: Treatment or boycott – that was the option, coming from people who consumed some 150 times more water than people in Sub-Saharan Africa can get for their average day and six to seven times more than Western Europeans, Australians or New-Zealanders.
Top-down solutions
Our provincial government, out of moral principles and perhaps because of this threat to our economy, issued an ukase for Greater Victoria to treat its sewage within a few years. They promised to partly fund the project and there is faint hope of federal funding.
Costly studies, with conclusions and recommendations were distilled in executive summaries for elected representatives who reacted according to political or ethical ideas or not so clear agendas.
This resulted in a decision by our regional government to build a secondary treatment network (at locations often rejected by residents), that would cost one billion, perhaps one and a half billion dollars that would reflect in municipal taxes and rents.
Reports abound to document that releasing raw sewage into the sea harms aquatic life. Some reports focus on human health, yet find no risk to us.<
Secondary treatment degrades the biological content of sewage,but still lets through phosphorus, nitrogen, heavy metals, pathogens and bacteriathat still harm aquatic life.
One can wonder at this point about the rationale of both processes.
Are there alternatives?
Is there no alternative to a step-by-step and perhaps marginal reduction in solid waste that residents, community services, industries and businesses of the greater Victoria will dump at Hartland until the site is full?
Is there no way to resolve the issue instead of postponing the crisis?
Is there no way to design and apply a zero solid waste policy, with focus on reducing production, distribution, sales, use of goods and services by longer lifetimes, reusing working components of worn out items, and recycling what cannot be reused?
Similarly, is there no alternative to a very costly and incomplete secondary sewage treatment? What becomes of source-control, part of the Capital Regional District’s strategies? What becomes of reducing water use and sewage, splitting gray and black water, reusing the former to irrigate parks, boulevards, front lawns or perhaps backyard vegetable gardens?
Wider reach of the issue
Other, much more loaded questions: Why do we let private and public sector planners and decision-makers assume that their target people are passive statistics with “lowest common denominator” unchangeable attitudes and behaviours?
Practical solutions
We, at the Networking for a Common Future in Sustainability (NetCFS), a non-governmental organization whose operating base happens to be in Saanich and more precisely in the Camosun area, would like to generate among citizens, an informed, critical review of the regional plans of action relative to solid and liquid waste management in the Greater Victoria. To remain practical and avoid an unmanageable process, we propose to do that neighbourhood by neighbourhood, under the aegis of Community Associations or similar groups, and to see to that the process is coordinated in each municipality, then in the region, independent of government structures, but in open communication with them.
We propose to start with the Camosun Community Association, and to trigger similarly in other associations, through the Saanich Community Associations Network (SCAN). We think that this is very feasible.
We invite readers to get in touch with us at netcfs@shaw.ca so that we can jointly explore possibilities, perhaps in a friendly meeting later this month or in December 2010, at a place to be at a place to be chosen depending on number and of responses and meeting room availability.
Yves Bajard, President, NetCFS and member of the Board, Camosun Community Association
