Environment would lose under consultant’s top pick: Esquimalt mayor

The reports have been filed, the public has spoken.

With the information in hand, there’s nothing left for the politicians to do but pick a site.

With last week’s meeting on potential treatment plant sites in east Saanich and north Oak Bay offering the final public input, the elected officals planning the Capital Regional District’s core-area sewage system will make their choice this fall.

The input has included community meetings as well as reports from consultants outlining the environmental, social and financial pros and cons of three candidate sites -- a CRD-owned parcel of land in the Haro Woods in Saanich and two on the University of Victoria campus.

But how will CRD directors weigh the different kinds of information they’ve received in making their decision?

Esquimalt Mayor Barbara Desjardins spoke forcefully against a consultant’s report that scored the Haro Woods site highest, due to its lower financial costs, but ranked it last environmentally.

“There’s not much that we’re doing in terms of evaluating things that is ever going to show the environment come out on top. And Haro Woods is a very special environment,” said Desjardins.

“We should have never purchased the property and we should be very careful in assessing it as a treatment site.”

She added the process should have chosen treatment technologies before settling on sites.

Victoria Coun. Charlayne Thornton-Joe also suggested there is a danger of financial concerns trumping environmental ones.

“Perhaps we should be having more discussions with the university and seeing whether there are partnerships there,” she wrote in an e-mail.

“As they excel in issues of climate change and sustainability, I believe this is something that they should be embracing as well.”

Oak Bay Coun. and retired accountant John Herbert said financial matters tend to be at the front of his mind, but he won’t make a decision before the vote approaches.

“I’m not going to spend the whole summer stewing about it,” he said.

“I’ve made lots of notes and I’ll try to read what the people said (at the final public meeting) and then we’ll make a decision.”

Committee chair, Saanich councillor Judy Brownoff, stressed that choosing a preferred option will not be the end of the process. Any site chosen will go for a detailed environmental review, or the committee may vote to receive environmental reports on more than one site before moving ahead.

“If the committee decides to pick one site, and say it’s Haro Woods ... we have to do an environmental assessment,” she said.

“I need to know what’s in the woods. I need to know if 10 trees come down, will hundreds of trees fall (in a storm)?”

kvass@vicnews.com