Victoria councillors took the first steps Thursday toward allowing a sewage-treatment plant to be buried in a waterfront park at Clover Point, across the street from Dallas Road homes.
With Coun. Geoff Young urging caution, councillors resolved to have Capital Regional District officials meet with the Fairfield/ Gonzales Community Association land-use committee to present a concept drawing as a first step and to hear their expectations and concerns about the concept.
“I believe that we’re being quite a bit premature with this,” Young said. “I think that we really have to hear more from the public before we make this degree of commitment.”
After more than a year of investigation and consultation, the CRD’s sewage committee, chaired by Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps, on Wednesday approved a compromise plan that calls for a tertiary-treatment plant at Clover Point in Victoria and a second plant at McLoughlin Point or in the Macaulay Point area, both in Esquimalt.
The decision came after Esquimalt in 2014 refused zoning variances that would have allowed a single regional sewage treatment plant built at McLoughlin. That plan was estimated to cost $788 million while the new two-plant option is estimated at just over $1 billion.
While not endorsing the new proposal, Victoria councillors spelled out some of their expectations if the treatment plant is to be located at Clover Point.
Essentially, they want the area to look, feel and smell like the park it currently is, and they want residents to continue to have access to the waterfront on the point during construction.
Conditions laid out by council for future approval in principle include:
• The surface of the site being restored upon completion as parkland with the final elevation not to exceed the current elevation of Dallas Road.
• Provision of a satisfactory neighbourhood amenity package.
• Mitigation of construction impacts, including continuous waterfront access and negotiation of working hours and access.
Young said if he believed the project was both important to the region and would save it money, he would support it. “But the estimates we have so far is that this solution is going to cost the people of the region a quarter of a billion dollars more than the solution that had been originally put forward with a plant at McLoughlin.”
Several councillors, including Helps, said council was not approving the site but simply referring the concept to the neighbourhood association for consideration.
Young disagreed: “This is not a simple motion. This is a motion that is committing this council to this direction, and I think it’s a very bad direction to go.”
Coun. Ben Isitt noted that there is existing infrastructure at Clover Point that screens sewage before it is discharged into the outfalls. The proposed treatment plant, he said, should be considered an expansion of an existing facility and not a new one.
Helps said no one should be surprised at the idea of using Clover Point, noting that it has been among potential sites put forward by Victoria for more than a year. “That doesn’t mean that we just say, ‘Oh yeah, we’re going to throw it in, no problem.’ There’s a lot of negotiating we can do,” she said.
Esquimalt Mayor Barb Desjardins said the issue of McLoughlin and Macaulay points probably won’t come to her council until it meets March 21.
She couldn’t predict her council’s thinking on the sites, but said it’s “absolutely not” a slam dunk. “I do hear from the community that there is some interest to reconsider based on the fact that it would be smaller and not a single site for the region. I think they’re looking and thinking size and opportunity,” she said.
“But today is just a day after that [CRD] meeting, so I don’t really have a gauge on it yet.”
