Capital Regional District staff are recommending directors ask the province to intervene in its impasse with Esquimalt over building a sewage treatment plant at McLoughlin Point.
Esquimalt council on Monday voted against rezoning height and buffer zone encroachments necessary to accommodate a plant, and asked staff to prepare a zoning amendment that would remove a sewage treatment plant as an acceptable use of the waterfront property.
The decisions leave the CRD’s core area liquid waste management committee, which meets today, with few options, said chairman Geoff Young on Tuesday.
Staff are recommending the CRD ask the province to overturn sections of Esquimalt’s amended bylaws.
“I suspect the committee will indeed see a need to ask the province to take some steps to intervene,” Young said.
Other alternatives open to the committee include saying no to regional sewage treatment and thereby contravening federal and provincial directives or returning to square one and finding another site.
“Other sites would have bigger impacts on residential occupants [and] they would be more costly,” Young said. “The negative reaction that came from Esquimalt, I think, would be duplicated in other municipalities.”
The regional district has estimated that relocating the plant from McLoughlin Point would add another $60 million to $100 million to the $230-million price tag.
“There really are not a lot of options open to us,” Young said.
“I hope that there is a decision made fairly quickly. As we spend more time making this decision, the cost of the project is likely to increase.”
The urge to get the issue resolved was echoed by Albert Sweetnam, project director for Seaterra, the civilian body overseeing the sewage treatment program. Sweetnam said that the procurement process has already started, with three bids under evaluation. “Our preference is really for the issue to get resolved as quickly as possible because as we delay, we cost the taxpayers more money,” he said.
“I don’t have a preference for how a solution is arrived at — our preference is just for a solution to be arrived at as soon as possible.”
Convincing any community in the region to accept a sewage treatment plant “would be very, very difficult,” he said.
Esquimalt will not allow a sewage treatment plant to be built within its borders, said Mayor Barb Desjardins. People from around the region spoke out against the McLoughlin site and the CRD must listen, she said.
“We need to come up with how we do this differently,” Desjardins said. “To continue down this path is to say the public is wrong. They were all very clear that this is the wrong place to put a sewage treatment plant.”
Esquimalt was offered a $13-million package of amenities — including walkways, bike paths and $55,000 a year for five years — in exchange for allowing the CRD to build the plant at McLoughlin Point.
