Re: “Sewage debate gets ugly: ‘I could just scream,’ ” March 3.
The article on the sewage-treatment debacle contains several quotes from Capital Regional District director and View Royal Mayor David Screech, bemoaning that politics and not pragmatism are being allowed to drive the process.
This strikes me as high comedy, considering that we are in this controversial, divisive situation because of politics and little else. The core area’s wastewater treatment approach has been reviewed dozens of times by scientists and engineers. The overwhelming consensus of those (despite vocal outliers) is that the screening and long-outfall method is a valid approach to wastewater disposal, given the receiving environment. Looking at secondary treatment is a waste of money, and tertiary treatment will be a shamefully expensive way to address a political problem.
It is politics that created the federal regulations requiring Victoria to implement secondary sewage treatment by 2020; politics that enable the governor of Washington state to pressure Victoria through threat of boycotts; politics that ignored Esquimalt’s original proposal to include McLoughlin Point as one of several plants in a distributed system.
No councillor or mayor worth their salt would acquiesce to having their municipality thrown under the bus the way that Esquimalt has been at the core area liquid waste management committee this past month. If that’s politics, so be it.
Let’s not fool ourselves: This billion-dollar boondoggle is a political game, and has nothing to do with pragmatism, science, engineering or economics. More’s the pity.
Susan Low, councillor
Township of Esquimalt
