When will the CRD face up to the fact that the Residual Solids Conveyance Line (sewage sludge pressure pipeline) is a bad idea?
A pipeline to take care of the sewage sludge to be generated as part of the wastewater treatment project was first tossed out as an “idea” in an early consultant’s report to the then CRD project management team. As the Seaterra project team migrated into its present form, the “idea” was carried forward and included a termination at a property purchased by CRD within Esquimalt, a distance of about one kilometre, which was cancelled, subsequently.
Sometime between 2012 and 2017, the RSCL “idea” was routed northwards to the Hartland Landfill (a CRD property), a distance of 18 kilometres, along Tillicum Road and Interurban, as opposed to sticking to existing CRD sewerage easements. Even more disturbing is the CRD’s “so-called” project information web-page that offered a close transfer of project requirements that would include Saanich neighbourhoods and the setting-up of a Saanich Liaison Committee, which doesn’t seem to have happened.
Given the fact that the CRD has decided to no longer support Integrated Resource Management, which might have included sewage sludge re-processing, why are they pursuing the RSCL idea?
Whatever happened to one of the earlier suggestions for disposal of sewage sludge via a barged transfer from the WWTP to Greater Vancouver where an existing system of sewage sludge re-generation has been operating for a number of years?
It’s open for discussion.
P.W. Bailey
Saanich