Skip to content

Political will on sewage treatment emerging in CRD

Reader holds out hope that logic, science will sway decision makers

Re: Sewage debate clogs CRD committee (News, Oct. 12)

How revealing it is to see some civic political posturing at the 11th hour of the Capital Regional District’s regional sewage treatment debate.

Are the silent majority of the public beginning to be heard?

There certainly needs to be some repositioning on the Victoria sewage treatment question at the provincial and federal levels.

With a provincial election in the new year and the federal byelection for Victoria looming in the more immediate future, the sewage treatment issue will unquestionably be on the minds of many voters like myself. It will be interesting to find out what the platforms of candidates running in that byelection are.

The current treatment plan is almost a billion dollars and likely to be full of cost overruns. Indeed, cost overruns seem to be a common occurrence, with large, publicly funded infrastructure projects. Therefore, may we assume we are on the precipice of yet another billion-dollar boondoggle, like the B.C. Hydro Smart Meter fiasco?

Technology is available which is more affordable, and which screens source contaminants better than the proposed plan, or so we are told by many leading scientific thinkers who have studied this issue.

Therefore, if this is in fact the case, you would think politicians and bureaucrats alike should be promoting such a solution, wouldn’t you?

Please let us all write to our political representatives and urge them to vote for science and reason to prevail on this issue. There are seniors, families, small businesses and others who can ill afford yet another fat bill from the plutocracy.

Ernest Robertson

Oak Bay