Elizabeth Brubaker
Last week, the governments of Canada and BC announced that they will foot almost two-thirds of the bill for a sewage treatment system for Victoria. Missing from the announcement was an explanation of why taxpayers across the country should be on the hook for Victoria’s sewage treatment.
Until now, Victoria (or the Capital Regional District, as the greater Victoria region is known) has gotten off easy, ignoring standards that are the norm elsewhere in the developed world. Instead of treating its sewage, the city simply passes it through a six-millimetre screen before discharging it into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
In the years since the provincial government warned that this practice must stop, Victoria has debated how and where to treat its sewage and who will pay for it. This week’s announcement once again lets Victoria off easy. Its residents will bear just $281.3 million of the total cost of $782.7 million.
Provincial taxpayers will chip in $248 million for Victoria’s treatment system. And federal taxpayers will chip in another $253.4 million. (Of this, $120 million from Infrastructure Canada’s Building Canada Fund will go towards constructing a sewage treatment plant, $50 million from the Green Infrastructure Fund will go to upgrading the sewage conveyance system, and $83.4 million from the P3 Canada Fund will go towards the biosolids energy centre.)
Combined, the federal and provincial contributions will exceed a half-billion dollars. Such subsidies are inequitable, inefficient, and unnecessary.
Why should those living in Saskatchewan or PEI pay to treat the sewage of those living in Victoria? Residents of every community have their own treatment bills to pay, through their septic system construction and maintenance costs, their municipal water bills, or their property taxes. Many face huge investments in their local infrastructure. Across the country, water and sewage systems require approximately $90 billion in new construction and upgrades.
Federal and provincial grants cannot possibly cover all of the necessary work. Instead of favouring some communities at the expense of others, it makes far more sense to require local users to pay the full costs of their own infrastructure.
Experience suggests that grants often create more problems than they solve. The promise of “free” money perverts investment decisions – it encourages municipalities to delay making necessary investments until the grants materialize, and to invest in unnecessary capacity once they do. The expectation of grants also erodes accountability – it gives municipalities an excuse for not meeting standards, and makes regulators think twice before enforcing those standards.
The good news is that, in most cases, grants aren’t necessary. Communities can enter into public-private partnerships (P3s) to obtain private financing for system improvements.
Victoria is planning a P3 for just one component of its proposed sewage system – the biosolids energy centre, where sewage sludge will be treated and turned into biogas, biofuel, and fertilizer. A private partner will design, build, and help finance the energy centre, and will operate and maintain it for 25 years. This arrangement is expected to harness private-sector innovation, transfer risk from the public sector to the private partner, enhance accountability, and save Victoria millions over the life of the project.
P3s can help many other communities obtain the infrastructure they need. Upper-level governments should encourage communities to go this route by reducing grants for water and sewage infrastructure. Where subsidies are required, governments should (except in rare circumstances) direct them to needy individuals rather than to the community at large.
For more arguments against infrastructure subsidies, and a more detailed case for private financing, see A Bridge Over Troubled Waters: Alternative Financing and Delivery of Water and Wastewater Services.
Environment Probe 
No! You’re absolutely WRONG that Victoria is “flouting” sewage laws if those laws (the new fed regs) are just not appropriate for our marine environment.
Victoria region does have several small land-based sewage treatment plants where the marine receiving environment demands such, but for our Victoria core area, where the large-volume, high-energy Juan de Fuca Strait currents do such a good job of assimilating the effluent, wasting $1.43 billion over 25 years for an unnecessary land-based sewage treatment plant makes NO sense at all.
Its just political optics over evidence-based science, as several oceanographers, public health doctors and engineers are very skeptical that a sewage plant would provide any measurable improvement in marine environmental health.
Victoria’s current, sustainable marine-based sewage treatment system produces NO greenhouse gases and NO sewage sludge.
Meanwhile, storm sewers are a huge problem that won’t be addressed by a sewage plant. Nor will the sewage plant remove chemicals of concern such pharmaceuticals.
Local groups challenging this unnecessary waste of taxpayers’ money and poor environmental stewardship:
1. Association for Responsible Environmentally Sustainable Sewage Treatment: http://www.aresst.ca
2. Responsible Sewage Treatment Victoria: http://www.rstv.ca
You have a bad memory lady. And a bad position to boot. As to the memory part, tell me why in hell I as a BCer was required to pay for the bridge to PEI? Why as I BCer do I have to contribute to Quebecs infrastructure? Quebecs day care? The list goes on and on. Now to the meat of your diatribe. Have you listened to any of the scientists involved in the matter or have you taken the word of Mr. Floatie as the truth. You probably take Suzukis position as gospel as well.
Errr…. Have you done ANY research into this? The majority of scientists disagree with this as costly and inefficient. It will do NOTHING to improve the health of the ocean environment as the only substances that will be regulated will be organic wastes, nitrogen, chlorine, and suspended solids. Any pharmaceuticals and chemicals that may be present in the 99% of liquid will remain there, to be pumped out into the ocean still through the two outfalls. The CRD’s source control program has been extremely effective, as contamination from the outfalls has not even come close to toxic levels since 1992, and the waste is easily metabolized by marine life. Industries and businesses have to take care of their own wastewater. In addition, the new biosolids facility will only add to our carbon footprint due to the fact that we will be pumping our wastes UPHILL 18 kms to Hartland landfill everyday! And then back again! Mr. Floatie, and any related special interest groups are idiotic and not fact-based. When you hear “raw sewage”, of course you’re going to think that’s gross… but most people don’t understand the nature of our receiving waters. Our daily waste is the equivalent of one drop in a 5 litre bucket of water, or 0.001% of the daily flow in the Juan de Fuca strait. Do your research. Educate yourself.
This is advertisement for P3s parading itself as poorly researched article.
Private financing is not a solution to a non-existent problem. It is an out and out ripoff of the taxpayer, subsidizing these unnecessary projects just so private “enterprise” can make a profit for itself.
The brainwashing and greenwashing of environmentally minded people to get their approval for these obviously dirty projects is criminal.