While the terms “sewage project” and “waste of money” have rarely been far apart, $189 million is a big number even by the standards of the region’s $765-million regional sewage-treatment plan.
Metchosin Mayor John Ranns is warning that the Capital Regional District’s plan to spend $189 million to treat sewage sludge could be a waste of money because it might not have to treat sludge after all. The sludge questions have to be answered clearly before it’s too late to save the money — if that is even possible.
Ranns points out that while the provincially appointed sewage-treatment-project board is labouring away on plans to treat the core area’s sewage and process the resulting sludge at the Hartland Landfill, a simultaneous but separate set of discussions is going on at the CRD’s integrated resource management committee about how to handle sludge.
That committee’s goal is to reduce the amount of garbage that goes into the landfill by finding alternative uses for wastes of all kinds.
One would think that the two committees would have been working together from the outset.
The sewage-project board’s plans include piping sewage sludge about 18 kilometres from the plant that will be built at McLoughlin Point to Hartland Road landfill. At Hartland, the sludge is to be processed through anaerobic digestion into what is known as Class-A biosolids, a soil supplement. Anaerobic digestion involves the use of micro-organisms to break down organic matter.
Meanwhile, at a CRD board table not far away, other people who work for the residents of the region are talking to companies that are interested in generating electricity by mixing sewage sludge with solid wastes such as food scraps and processing the mixture. This would produce revenue.
Ten companies are interested in doing the work, and several of them say they don’t need the sludge to be treated first. If the regional district goes with one of those proposals, the sludge plant would be unnecessary.
“It just does not make sense to proceed with a process that we have been told by a number of major companies doesn’t need to happen,” Ranns said.
The obvious answer is not to build the plant unless it’s necessary, but, unsurprisingly, it’s not simple.
One problem is that the sewage project includes federal funding that depends on sludge treatment being part of the process. With a tight deadline of 2020 to finish the project in time to get that funding, the project team can’t afford to wait on options that might or might not bear fruit.
The integrated resource committee doesn’t have firm plans or signed deals, while the sewage board has to get things moving as quickly as possible. A staff report says an integrated resource management facility could take four years of applications, approvals and construction.
Something will have to be worked out, because at the moment, the plan is to store the Class-A biosolids at Hartland, and the province won’t allow that to continue indefinitely. The solids will have to go somewhere.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, who chairs the CRD sewage committee, said the contract for the sludge-processing plant will not be awarded until September. Meanwhile, efforts are underway to co-ordinate sludge treatment with the desire to produce a byproduct from the sludge that will make money.
“We are the stewards of both of these processes,” Helps said. “Many of us sit on both committees and we’re trying to find a way to logically bring them together where possible.”
But if, as Ranns suggests, we’re in danger of wasting tens of millions of dollars, the committees need to do a lot more than try.
