The Capital Regional District has deferred building a sewage treatment plant on the West Shore for up to a decade — effectively handing the job to Langford and Colwood.

Langford has talked for years about Westhills having its own sewage treatment plant. Colwood has championed testing sewage treatment technology that has a smaller footprint and could be much cheaper than conventional secondary treatment.

Further, Colwood politicians weren’t impressed when it surfaced that the CRD was looking at Royal Bay for a secondary treatment plant, but didn’t bother tell Colwood.

So last week Langford, Colwood and Sooke agreed to move on establishing a series of West Shore utilities for sewage, water, rewnewable energy and so on.

Forging ahead with decentralized sewage plants using cutting-edge technology makes the most sense. Spending money on a water utility, for instance, doesn’t — why fix what isn’t broken? CRD water services gives the Greater Victoria consistently clean, safe water.

Before the West Shore can go it alone with sewage treatment, questions need to be answered.

First, it needs to figure out how it will integrate with the CRD sewage project and how sewage taxation will work. Second, what is the public role in all this? The decision by Colwood, Langford and Sooke was made in a closed meeting and little had been discussed at the council level.

Moving on smaller treatment plants is a good idea, but politicians will have to explain convincingly how allowing developers to bear the brunt of financing treatment plants will work in the long-term public interest.

Colwood went the route of developer-driven sewers in the 1990s. By any measure that has resulted in the most complicated and difficult sewer taxation scheme in Canada.

That ongoing cautionary tale drives home the necessity of an open, transparent process that has buy-in from the West Shore public.