VICTORIA’S SEWAGE CIRCUS
PART 2: THE SUBVERSION OF THE EVIDENCE
Read what your elected representatives have actually done.
Print this out and discuss it with your friends and neighbours.
J.E. (Ted) Dew-Jones, P.Eng.
On July 21st2006 British Columbia’s Environment Minister Barry Penner issued an order which requires the Capital Regional District (CRD) to develop a plan for a fixed schedule for the provision of land-based sewage treatment facilities for the Core Area of Greater Victoria. The Core Area is the Municipalities of Victoria, Oak Bay, Saanich, Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood and Langford. The order necessitates replacing the current natural sewage treatment system. At present the sewage passes through fine screens and discharges through two deep sea outfalls (at 60 meters depth) over a kilometer offshore.
This order was issued despite highly credible scientific and public health evidence which demonstrates that the existing system is as effective as secondary treatment whilst avoiding its considerable disadvantages and estimates show that it will cost over a billion dollars.
This essay seeks to have Minister Penner’s order reversed, by offering the essential information Victoria’s taxpaying citizens need to make a sound judgement on what, if anything, needs to be done. I have written this article in the first person because of my deep and long-standing personal involvement with this issue.
In 1991 I wrote a booklet titled “Victoria’s Sewage Circus” (Ref. Victoria’s Sewage Circus – Read the Facts – J.E.Dew-Jones, P. Eng 1991. Published by J.E.Dew-Jones, 63 Dock Street, Victoria, B.C. V8V 1Z9). Available on line at:http://www.members.shaw.ca/sewagecircus/ and at Public Libraries. This booklet was written before the referendum in 1992, in which Victorians soundly rejected land based treatment. I have written this essay because of new information that has emerged since that referendum was held. Some of the material in my original booklet has been repeated in this essay to ensure that it can stand alone in providing the basic information needed for you, the reader, to decide whether this order should be rescinded. However, there is much else in "Victoria’s Sewage Circus" that is still relevant. Specifically, at the end of Chapter 2, there is a summary of professional opinions about long outfalls; in particular how well they work at controlling pollution without the problems of land based plants. I would urge you to read the booklet too, if you want a complete understanding of all the facts relating to this issue. I also recommend that you visit the website developed by scientists that is filled with relevant material (www.rstv.ca).
HOW LONG OUTFALLS BEGAN AND HOW THEY WORK
Until the 1950’s long pipes in the sea had to be laid down segment by segment by divers. It was slow, costly and somewhat dangerous. Then the engineering profession devised a system that allowed the pipe segments to be joined on land and the whole length pulled and pushed out to sea. The savings in time and money was dramatic.
Obvious to the engineering profession but to no one else was the equally dramatic improvement the new system made in treating sanitary sewage. The common perception that land based sewage treatment plants convert material from being poisonous to being harmless is unrelated to reality. Land based plants mimic natural processes until the waste has reached a stage where nature can handle it in the same way as it handles all the other animal and vegetable waste and always has.
In secondary sewage treatment plants unwanted factors such as suspended solids and demand for oxygen will commonly be reduced by 90% so the waste stream has effectively been diluted tenfold. With the marine long outfall systems the dilution factor is far greater. The initial dilution at Victoria’s long outfalls was about 200 to one before the waste was dispersed in the sea. However, the design is not based on the dilution needed but on the far stricter criteria of ensuring that pathogens do not reach shore with potential human health impact.
In Victoria’s case, the treatment plant on land is replaced by using a cone shaped chunk of the sea. The sewage pours out and up at considerable velocity, mixing with sea water as it does so, reaching the intended dilution rate well before it disperses at or near the surface. There was a debate originally whether using the sea in this manner was acceptable. Because any adverse impact on the sea outside that cone is negligible, whereas the environmental impact outside a land plant would be substantial, it was deemed obvious that the practice was sensible and effective.
One chapter of “Victoria’s Sewage Circus” was written by oceanographer and University of Victoria Professor Jack Littlepage. He wrote: “we should be promoting our [Victoria’s] system as one of the most efficient and environmentally sound systems in North America”. Minister Penner’s order therefore means trashing the Rolls Royce of North American sewage treatment systems.
THE SEA
The world’s oceans have been evolving for about two billion years. In that time the sea has eroded whole mountain ranges so that everything man has mined on land has been mined by the sea for millenia. Zinc, for example, is in the sea at .005 parts per million, chromium at .0003 parts per million and so on. And, because man came from the sea, all these things are also in our blood, sometimes in minute proportions. Often references to toxicants have no useful meaning because they are not put in context. It would be absurd to say our blood was toxic, but it is filled with material that could properly be described as toxic in greater concentrations.
The sea also contains all the bodily waste from fish and sea mammals and from the rotting of vegetable material. All this organic material dies and sinks to the seabed, so the sea can be thought of as a giant animal cemetery. There is natural composting on the ocean floor. Victoria’s sewage contribution is negligible.
HOW THE SYSTEM WAS DESIGNED
Engineers have been designing sewage treatment plants based on modern science since the 1920s. In large measure, earlier facilities were designed ad hoc based on what worked, but over the years, like everything else, they have become more and more sophisticated. Today, once a plant is in operation its impact on the waters into which the outfall discharges is monitored. Originally this work was done by engineers, but since the 1940s biologists and oceanographers have taken over.
These monitoring results are then published within the engineering profession through their journals and in educational institutions. As a result, every new plant built today incorporates the knowledge learned from earlier plants, just like every open heart operation incorporates the knowledge gained from all the previous operations.
The relevance of this is that the process that led to the installation of the tertiary treatment plant at Kelowna, one of the most sophisticated in the world, is precisely the same as the process that led to the installation of the long outfalls discharging raw screened sewage for Victoria. Each represents the most appropriate solution to control pollution. In Victoria’s case the past experience was from studying the impact of long outfalls around the coasts of the US and of Britain.
By the late 1960s, when the Capital Regional District’s engineers applied for a permit to allow installation of the first long outfall, there was already enough experience from monitoring at other locations at other sites around the world for them to be able to offer a very conservative substantiation that it would not cause any problem. A formula had been developed at the engineering faculty of a US University that enabled calculation of the necessary length of outfall to control pathogens, depending on local marine conditions.
However fully the engineers proved their case scientifically, there was from the start an ongoing confrontation with a certain section of the public who protested vigorously at the wickedness of engineers in discharging raw sewage to the sea. Politicians, dependent on votes, have largely been in sympathy with these protestors. The result has been that plans for long outfall systems that might have been developed in other locations have been abandoned, to the detriment of the environment and of the public. Indeed, engineers may ask themselves how hard they should fight, and be subjected to much abuse, for a sewage treatment system that the public, or at least their political representatives, do not want, and which will cost them far less in both construction and ongoing operating expenses. Things are not necessarily as they seem. Every penny taken out of the tax payer’s pocket goes straight into someone else’s.
CHEMICALS IN SEWAGE
Concerns are expressed about all kinds of chemicals people use in their daily lives. These materials are massively diluted in the household liquid waste and then again in the sewer and then again at the long outfall. Such material is of similar density to the mass of the sewage and will disperse with it. When discharged to the sea, even if it is still toxic, it can only do harm in the tiny zone it occupies before it has been diluted to the point where it is not.
Molecules of heavy metals make up only a very small fraction of the long outfall discharges, and this fraction is further limited - in Victoria’s case - by our having so little industry. They break away from the dispersion upflow and sink to the seabed and are spread over a considerable area. The CRD’s own former biologist, Laura Taylor, made deductions about such material which she has given me permission to quote. She refers to the sea mussels, scallops, clams and other mollusks, and regarding the toxicants states, "if the chemicals were highly toxic we would see reduced numbers of animals off the outfalls, not larger numbers as is the case".
It is completely illogical to think of spending money to overcome adverse impacts from this very small source of metal contamination. An adverse impact is highly unlikely to develop, and after thirty five years none has been detected. Meanwhile adverse impacts from land-based sewage treatment plants which can be significant, are ignored. Finally there is no certainty that such contaminated material would be better off in a land based plant. On those rare occasions when a slug of really toxic material is discharged down the sewer it will have only a limited short term impact on the sea but can knock a land based plant out of commission, sometimes for weeks.
If the Province is concerned about toxicants the logical thing to do is to examine their source and the route they are taking, and set priorities where action is needed. For example the impact on the Fraser River from the Annacis Island secondary plant is significantly greater than the impact of our outfalls on the sea. Indeed it is doubtful if any plant in the Province has less impact on the waters into which it discharges than Victoria’s outfalls have on the sea. Meanwhile the Fraser River sandbars are filled with mercury.
A COMPARISON OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE LONG OUTFALL TREATMENT SYSTEM COMPARED WITH A LAND- BASED PLANT
Overwhelmingly, the mass of the material in our sewage stream turns into the nutrients which are the basis of all life during its dispersal in the sea. They have no negative impact and some have argued that the addition of the nutrients benefits the sea. Toxicants and household chemicals have already been discussed and the chance of them having an adverse impact of any significance is clearly remote.
Tiny amounts of fat can reach the surface a mile offshore when the plume surfaces, but it never does so in summer and only about 4% of the time in winter. These amounts of fat have been greatly reduced because of the success of the CRD’s source control program requiring restaurants and other premises to capture cooking fat prior to discharging water to the sewer.
THE LAND-BASED PLANT
In a land-based plant, this fatty material, instead of being massively diluted by sea water, would discharge raw into tanks, with air being blasted through, causing airborne bacteria and viruses that may be transmitted to operators nearby and households far nearer than those near the long outfalls.
Medical researchers at the University of Pisa have written that “the production of microbial aerosols by urban sewage treatment plants...may in fact represent a health hazard for plant workers and nearby residents alike”. Until recently it was believed that land based plants did not cause illness because those working at them were as healthy as anyone else. However, the latest research seems to throw doubt on that. At the least there is a possibility of a health hazard whereas none exists now. There are also health hazards in the operation of land-based plants which are all on record. Two workers from the CRD’s Saanich Peninsular treatment plant are on permanent disability but the CRD has not released any facts about worker health in the operation of their present plants.
The most significant result of moving to land-based treatment is that the material which now ends up as nutrients in the sea, causing no problem, would be converted to sludge, the disposal of which is a never - ending problem. People who want to sell it to farmers have never tried to do so. It can only be used as a soil conditioner – not a fertilizer - and farmers want fertilizers in a readily available form.
Not only would all the benefits of the long outfall system be sacrificed; but there would be a continual risk of pollution and smells from using a system that relies on electrical and mechanical devices and avoidance of human error; there would be failures; there will be the continual use of electricity; and the continual amenity damage from introducing nasty industrial complexes into pristine rural areas.
In one year in BC, 67,000 workers made claims under the Workers Compensation Act, of whom 4700 were permanently impaired. Failing a proper study by the CRD we can make a rough guess that perhaps 60 workers could finish the project with a broken back or no arm. Such costs are acceptable where civil engineering work is needed but not in the author’s view where it is beyond reasonable doubt that the disadvantages outweigh the benefits. Such plants are rather dangerous places to work because of the open tanks, particularly in icy conditions, and accidents will occur. The footnote is one reference to this.[1]
The initial environmental cost -- in the production, transportation and installation of the materials in the land-based sewage treatment facilities (it’s size has not been appreciated) is huge. Imagine the pollution and fuel in quarrying of iron ore, transport to the steel mill, manufacture of iron rod for reinforcing bars, transport to a wholesaler and then to the site, manufacture of cement (one ton of carbon dioxide produced in the manufacture of one ton of cement) sawing trees for formwork, transport to a saw mill, etc. Such costs can be dismissed for a ten million dollar contract but not for a project one or two hundred times larger.
CONCLUSION
The benefits from abandoning the long outfall natural treatment system are insignificant but the detriments are substantial, so an order given under an Act to protect the environment will beyond reasonable doubt do the opposite. It is a reversion to Galileo’s time, when those in power would overthrow science in favor of popular mythology. Furthermore, this analysis does not take into account the huge financial impact nor the environmental benefits the money purportedly allocated to this land-based system could otherwise achieve.
MONITORING
When the permits authorizing the original outfall discharges were issued, a condition was that there be a monitoring program to be carried out by an independent agency. The problem was that if it were to be carried out by the CRD or the Province, people were liable to believe all they were trying to do was save money. There was a comical side to the issue because the Minister of Environment would have liked nothing better than for his staff, including me, to tell him secondary treatment was needed because politicians live by votes and that was what the public kept demanding.
At the end of the day, it was mutually agreed that the best agency to monitor the outfall would be the appropriate faculty of the University of Victoria. They had in their employ scientists who were internationally known for their expertise in this field. Local Medical Health Officers were also included in the monitoring process. It seemed obvious at the time that nobody would be able to claim they knew better later. How little we knew!
The purpose of the monitoring was not simply, or even mainly, to gather information, because the results were predictable with a great deal of certainty. What was believed essential was to convince the public that the engineer’s predictions had been well founded. That purpose was never met because the results of the monitoring, whilst available, have never been publicized.
The first report by Professor Derek Ellis stated that the impact of the sewage was "insignificant". Some later data has been more complex but to this day no University of Victoria Marine Scientist or Medical Health Officer has ever deduced that land-based treatment is needed. Despite this fact, over the last thirty years the CRD has never defended its original decision to install the long outfalls.
When the previous political eruption occurred, before the 1992 referendum, no monitoring had been done for many years. In my book I advocated that it needed to be done, perhaps every 5 years, because of the continuing need to reassure the public that the screened sewage discharged through the deep sea outfalls was not causing problems. The CRD did indeed carry out monitoring which once again confirmed there was no problem.
In more recent years the CRD has gone overboard, monitoring and measuring every imaginable factor year after year. Just why is another mystery, for the sea only changes very slowly.
THE POLITICAL ERUPTION
By 2005 the politicians had had time to forget what the public had said they wanted and had been subject to never - ending pressure from people with no relevant qualifications and taunts from columnists like Joel Connelly of the Seattle Post - Intelligencer. This emboldened the chairman of the CRD, Mayor Lowe of Victoria, to initiate a study. What was its purpose? In reality its purpose was to try and find some justification for adding secondary treatment. The CRD had the judgements of the University of Victoria Marine Scientists and Medical Officers of Health and knew beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no problems with the deep sea discharges and the natural sewage treatment by the ocean. All kinds of committees were set up and all kinds of initiatives pursued and a veritable sea of money has been spent and is still being spent. Their difficulty was that there was no problem to solve.
It was part way through their deliberations that Environment Minister Penner issued his order, although how they were to go about it was left up to the CRD. Nobody pointed out that the order meant that thirty years of monitoring was to be ignored. There had never been any point in doing it. It seems a pity they could not have decided that earlier on and saved all that money. Worse is that the dedicated work of the scientists is all to be scrapped; likewise that of the scientists who advised a committee of Congress that secondary treatment was not needed with long outfalls; likewise the British Royal Commission which deduced that under the right environmental conditions, long outfalls "could be better" than on-land secondary treatment. A large part of many lives scrapped for political convenience at a huge cost in money and in sacrificing our environment.
THE SETAC REPORT
Some time after the CRD had begun its deliberations and before Mr.Penner had issued his order, the CRD did something bizarre; they employed a US based organization to advise them, the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC). Its staff could not have been more highly qualified on paper, but they did not come from a place where there were long outfalls. How anyone would think they would know better than our own scientists who have been monitoring our long outfalls for a generation is a mystery. Perhaps they hoped to be given different advice than they had been given so far.
Not only did the CRD ignore what their own monitoring had revealed, at huge cost, but they did not seemingly ask the views of our own Institute of Ocean Sciences at Patricia Bay which has been monitoring our waters since the 1920s. The Institute’s Director, at the time of the referendum, wrote in the press and gave lectures to explain why Victoria did not need secondary treatment. That was Dr. Bob Stewart, a scientist of international renown. He charged no fee. SETAC charged $600,000.
The SETAC report is written in a style which I confess fills me with doubt, e.g.:. “How to handle the disposal of wastewater in the CRD now and in the future is a ‘risk management’ decision that should involve inputs from a variety of disciplines. The panel provides the CRD with scientific, technological and engineering perspectives, but other important inputs include social...” and on and on it goes. I don’t see it like that. If we have a system that works we should not muck with it.
Some words in the text and the verbal presentation by SETAC’s spokesman would lead one to believe that the report is going to finish by recommending secondary treatment. Those words were quoted by Mr.Penner in justifying his order. The problem is that the report does not make any such recommendation. Indeed the most reasonable interpretation of the report’s conclusions is that we should not be building a secondary treatment plant.
SETAC states that the benefits of treatment cannot be described with any precision, but then they are not described at all. No one to this day has explained what the benefits of the secondary treatment plant are to be. It is like operating on a person's body without knowing quite why.
Only one paragraph in the conclusion mentions treatment and the issue is so critical that I quote the whole of it. The public can then make up their own minds how much regard to it they or Mr. Penner should pay and whether they think they got value for their money from the SETAC report.
“The latter activity (to refine the CRD’s estimates of the costs of different treatment options) would be a proactive step toward identifying the treatment option that, if selected, would best meet the long term needs of the community and the anticipated future regulatory environment. Benefit-cost prescriptions have been suggested for such choices: the best choice among options is that for which the last dollar spent on treatment costs is just balanced by an equal gain in benefits. Given the difficulty in estimating benefits, however, a potential approach might be to install treatment comparable to that employed in similar cities surveyed in section 4.8 of this report.”
Thus making it crystal clear what the CRD should do.
SCANDALS
The attempt to find a cure for a problem that does not exist has thus spawned a number of scandals:
- The CRD retaining the University of Victoria to carry out monitoring and interpretation of the results, and then ignoring their advice;
- The Ministry of Environment and the CRD ignoring the findings of scientists doing similar work around the shores of the United States and Britain, thus writing off the work of those who have devoted decades to comparable situations.
- The CRD retaining a US organization with no experience of Victoria’s situation, thus discounting the work of the University of Victoria scientists and of the Institute of Ocean Sciences at Patricia Bay.
- Paying $600,000 for the report which in fact contains no recommendations but only suggests “a potential approach might be….”.
- The Minister of Environment issuing an order under an Act intended for the protection of the environment without examining its adverse impacts. It is beyond reasonable doubt that the implementation of that order would have the net effect of damaging the environment and adding risks to public health and safety.
Neither the CRD nor our municipal politicians examined grounds for appealing that order. They are ignoring the fact that sewage discharges in other locations around the Province have a far greater impact than that of our long outfalls.
They are also ignoring the vastly greater benefits that could be gained by spending the money, for example, on needed social programs during a recession. In a sense the order can be taken as sacrificing valid public needs.
Ted Dew-Jones, P.Eng. October 30th , 2009
[1]Page 1, Health Hazard Manual: Wasterwater Treatment Plant and Sewer Workers. Exposure to chemical hazards and biohazards By Nellie J. Brown, M.S., C.I.H. Cornell University,Chemical Hazard Information Program,Dr. James Platner, Toxicologist Director. New York State Department of Labor Grant #C005413 Revision 12/01/97