Don’t buy into sewer backer’s clean harbour myth

By Anita Voss, to Sooke News Mirror on August 13, 2003

Proponents of the sewer proposal in its present form flood us with more or less romantic ideas about how the harbour of Sooke will get "cleaned up" and clean enough for shellfish harvesting once the sewer system is in.

These assumptions make it even into the official announcements put in the Sooke News Mirror by District of Sooke staff (Sooke News June, July as "Sewer Information Update"). Here are some sobering facts: The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, DFO, provides maps, showing shellfish closures from the tip of Saanich Peninsula to and including Pedder Bay and explains "areas closed to harvesting of all Bivalve Molluscs due to sewage contamination." Most of these closed areas are serviced by sewers. In addition DFO closed practically all the east side of Vancouver Island to shellfish harvesting due to sanitary contamination. It is difficult to imagine how DFO will treat Sooke Harbour (closed at the present) and Otter Point differently once the outfall pipe is in.

Ultraviolet radiation does not improve things much, because DFO considers all other polluting factors besides bacterial contamination in its decision for closures, especially after inevitable occasional failures of the sewer plant system.

Residents who oppose the sewers are apparently "stuck in the Dark Ages" as recent letters to the editor of this newspaper claim. On the contrary, very few people in Sooke seem to be opposed to "sewers." However, numerous residents, including myself, are deeply worried about the present sewer plan with its secondary treatment and outfall in the Juan de Fuca Strait. Similar secondary treatment plants were built in central Europe at the end of the 19th century, with outfalls into the main water bodies. As a result, by the 1950-60 even large rivers like the Elbe and Rhine were green and brown soups. From then on new various tertiary systems were built and outfalls were not allowed, be it into the sea or into the rivers unless it had drinking water standards. Most water from European sewer plants is recycled now either for drinking water or irrigation.