Greater Victoria politicians bowed to provincial pressure Wednesday and agreed to set up an independent panel of experts to oversee sewage treatment plans for the region.
The Capital Regional District board made the decision following a private meeting with B.C. Community Minister Peter Fassbender, who essentially told the politicians to get moving or risk losing more than $500 million in federal and provincial money this fall.
“The minister made it very clear that there was just too many committees, too many interests and what we need to do is focus,” said Oak Bay Mayor Nils Jensen, a CRD board director. “So what we’ve done today is essentially accepted the recommendation of a very lean, very pointed governance structure which will come up with recommendations.”
Jensen rejected suggestions that Fassbender was taking charge of the project by putting pressure on the CRD to get things kickstarted. “He’s just facilitating it and I accept that’s what he’s doing,” Jensen said.
“Now, it comes with a fairly big stick, because if we don’t go down this road, there is the very real possibility that by the end of September we will not have $500 million in grants.
“That’s the danger and that’s what I think motivated the CRD today to move forward in the way we did.”
Fassbender offered few details of his meeting with CRD directors.
“I said to them I think the key here is to restore the confidence of the people in the region and to move the project ahead,” he said. “There’s some clear deadlines ahead of them.”
CRD board chairwoman Barb Desjardins said the panel will include “highly skilled people” operating independently of politicians. It will select a project director and develop a business case for sewage treatment.
“That project board will benefit from the work that we’ve done,” she said. “So they’re not going to have to reinvent anything.
“They’ve got a lot of information at their fingertips that they will be able to develop a business case and come back to us and say, ‘Here’s how we think it needs to go.’ ”
She said the panel’s recommendations will not be binding on the CRD board. “The board always has the decision ultimately.”
It’s unclear who will sit on the board. CRD staff will work with the province to identify potential appointees, Desjardins said.
“It will come back to us and we will approve who goes on this board and how it will move forward,” she said. “We will be developing the terms of reference. That will come back to the board … we’re hopeful in a couple of weeks, because we know we need to get going.”
The CRD has been looking at building plants at Clover Point in Victoria and at either McLoughlin Point or Macaulay Plain in Esquimalt at an estimated cost of $1.13 billion.
Esquimalt previously rejected a single plant at McLoughlin Point, but Jensen said that decision may be revisited if the panel presents that as the best option. He noted that McLoughlin is the only properly zoned site owned by the CRD.
“If this way forward shows that the best and cheapest and most environmental site is at McLoughlin, I would just assume that Esquimalt would go along with that,” he said. “This would be an outside, arms-length independent recommendation.”
Desjardins, who is also the mayor of Esquimalt, declined to comment on how her council would react to such a recommendation. In a recent letter to the CRD, she said her township continues to reject the notion of a single regional sewage-treatment plant at McLoughlin Point.
