Georgia Strait Alliance and the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation are conducting a survey of municipal candidates in the Capital Regional District’s (CRD) 7 core areas to clarify each candidate’s stance on Victoria’s plan for sewage treatment. How candidates answer this question will be publicized in advance of the municipal elections with local media, shared with community organizations and made available on the Georgia Strait Alliance website (www.GeorgiaStrait.org), as well as the websites of all three organizations involved. Please also find attached some information on the sewage treatment issue in the Capital Regional District.
Question: As a councillor I will support and work positively to ensure a comprehensive secondary or better sewage treatment system for the CRD core area is built before 2020, and that costs are share between local, provincial and federal governments?
Please check one:
Agree ________
Disagree _______
Comments:
I support the better option, because one already exists: source control with oceanic sewage treatment. I strongly believe that land-based sewage treatment is environmentally irresponsible, and fiscally reckless. We need to work with institutions, commercial properties, and industries on better source control, as they are a major source of pollutants.
However, I am strongly in favour of doing some level of treatment (plus additions of rain gardens) for the storm water, something that many scientists are now saying is a greater threat to the ocean than sewage.
I will also say this: If sewage treatment is required of us by senior levels of government, then any such treatment plants should be kept in public hands and run by public organizations, not private companies.