B.C.’s Capital Regional District (CRD) will receive federal and provincial financial support to plan wastewater treatment for its core area municipalities.
The Governments of Canada and British Columbia will each contribute up to $3.33 million to eligible costs of a wastewater treatment study. The CRD will contribute the remaining third, for a total of $10 million.
The CRD is planning secondary sewage treatment for the seven core area municipalities of Colwood, Esquimalt, Langford, Oak Bay, Saanich, Victoria, and View Royal with a population of approximately 330,000 people.
The federal and provincial support will go toward the Development Phase of the wastewater management program. During this Phase, the CRD will refine its design and the project elements, including resource recovery options, site identification, and procurement analysis, which includes a detailed analysis of the project and its costs.
What is really interesting is that the ‘detailed analysis’ will not include a review of an opportunity to simply connect the two main outfalls into a bulk transfer pipeline that would then deliver the raw ssewage 70 km to an abandoned hydroelectric reservoir where it could easily be treated and recycled for storage and sale at a much higher value than the cost of the energy employed for the pumping, and all at a fraction of the projected capital cost, and, with significantly less GHG emissions (those ‘good ol boys’ know a good porkbarrel when it comes along and who not to invite to the party).