The Capital Regional District may have to walk away from $83.4 million in federal grant money as it explores innovative options for its sewage treatment program, some local politicians said Wednesday.
“Ultimately, we do we want the federal government to participate. Of course we do,” Saanich Coun. Vic Derman told members of the core area sewage committee on Wednesday. “But we don’t really want to get ourselves in a situation where we are tied to an overly expensive solution because it’s coming along with some federal dollars. That makes no sense.”
Part of the CRD’s approved liquid waste management plan has called for a biosolids processing centre at the Hartland Road landfill where sludge (the stuff left over from sewage treatment) would be piped and processed using anaerobic digestion to produce biosolids which could be used as a fuel substitute, produce biogas and recover phosphorus.
Derman has long been arguing the CRD should explore alternate technologies such as gasification, which could be cheaper, require less land and also handle kitchen scraps and garbage.
Derman told the committee that a gasification plant could be built for about $60 million compared to the $265-million biosolids facility that was being planned under the now paused Seaterra plan.
“If you think of the numbers I just gave, then the gasification solution appears to offer the potential of being built for less than the local contribution under the proposed solution with federal and provincial participation. So it would cost you less without even federal or provincial money,” he said.
Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps agreed with Derman. “While we don’t want to snub our noses at any funding that’s available to us, there may be possibilities for actually spending overall far fewer taxpayer dollars if we remain or get open — truly open — to new ideas,” she said, adding: “It may mean losing the funding for the biosolids plant.”
The CRD’s Seaterra sewage treatment project has a budget of $788 million. The federal government has committed $253 million coming out of three pots: $120 million from the Building Canada Fund toward the treatment plant; $50 million from the Canada Green Fund for pipes, pump stations and tanks; and $83.4 million from PPP Canada for a biosolids plant.
The Building Canada and Canada Green funding have 2019 completion deadlines but time is running out on the biosolids funding. Under the existing arrangement, the region has until March 31 this year to sign the funding agreement or the funding could be lost.
The federal government has agreed to a 12-month extension but only if the CRD meets certain conditions, including committing to a timeline and having all approvals in place — including an approved treatment plant site — within a year. It’s a timeline that staff say would be difficult if not impossible to meet.
It’s unclear what the impact the loss of federal funding would be on the $62-million provincial grant that’s earmarked for the biosolids facility.
CRD directors instructed staff to enter into discussions with their federal counterparts to see what flexibility there might be and to report back next week.
All federal funding agreements are tied to the existing Seaterra wastewater treatment program, which would have seen a regional treatment plant at Esquimalt’s McLoughlin Point in operation by 2018. But the region halted that plan last year when Esquimalt refused to rezone McLoughlin to permit the plant, and the province refused to override the decision.
Since McLoughlin was rejected, Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood, Langford and the Songhees First Nation have formed a committee to explore alternatives. Saanich, Victoria and Oak Bay have done the same.
