Biosolid plans stall on safety worries
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Concern over environmental damage from spreading sewage sludge on land helped push back a decision on what to do with the solids that flow through the pipes as the region fine tunes its plans to build a sewage treatment system.
Politicians on the Capital Regional District's core-area liquid waste management looked over a consultants report that recommended a mix of uses, including selling dried sludge to fuel cement kilns, as well as for use as dried fertilizer, top soil and for reclaiming mines and investigating building a plant at the Hartland landfill that would produce electricity by burning dried sludge and garbage.
But the prospect of spreading sewage on dry land, even after treatment and composting, shouldn't be on the table, Victoria councillor Philippe Lucas argued.
"I have some discomfort that we're overestimating benefits and underestimating problems," he said. Lucas argued the treated sludge will be still be laden with heavy metals and cancer-causing chemicals that mimic human hormones and interfere with normal development.
Consultant Steve Krugel, with the firm Brown and Caldwell, acknowledged that sludge contains some hazardous substances, but said its being used safely in land application across North America and Europe.
Other committee members voiced other concerns with the proposals on the table before voting to delay a decision until next week.
Esquimalt mayor Barb Desjardins said the decision shouldn't be made without more information on how much carbon will be produced from trucking sludge and what the Hartland energy plant would cost.
The province ordered the region to come up with plan to treat to provide secondary sewage treatment in 2006. The deadline to have those plans submitted to province is now coming close, Dec. 31.
The CRD has already been granted a one-year extension from its original deadline, which would have been up last December.
kvass@vicnews.com
