Sunday, June 26, 1994 - North Shore News - 7
FA SERENA ANT) LETTERS AI NETO NO EI FOP” RET SS |

~ INSIGHTS

Local sewage treatment is shan eful

MAHATMA GANDHI said
you can judge a people by the
way they treat their animals.

T have no argument with that, but
I suspect you can also judge a people
by the way they treat their sewage.

By which measure, the people of
Victoria, the Greater Vancouver
Regional District, and Prince Rupert
can only be judged harshly. They
face becoming a rather disgusting
footnote in the history books.

We continue to befou! the waters
at levels that are well beyond the
legal permissible limits, Jet alone the
ecological limits. And to make things
worse, the “legal permissible levels”
themselves generally amount to a
mere licensing of the status quo, as
opposed to being based on any scien-
tific rationale.

I don’t know how many readers
will ever be tempted into picking up
and reading a copy of a booklet
called The National Sewage Report
Card: Rating the Treatment Methods
and Discharges uf 20 Canadian
Cities, prepared by the Sierra Legal
Defence Fund.

But here is a funky, down-home
report on life as it really is that you
ought to look at, just to prove how
mature you are, if nothing else. Or, at
least, how unsqueamish.

Normally, we do our best to pre-
tend that all those toilets and sinks
and showers and tubs we use don’t
drain down into fish-bearing waters.

Or, at least, we convince our-
selves that there is some kind of
near-miraculous technological inter-
vention that purifies enough of the
toxic nightmare soup to allow water
in the vicinity of the outflow to con-
tinue to sustain aquatic life.

Back when there were outhouses,
the sewage life of the community

Bob

STRICTLY PERSONAL

was individual, calculable, and other-
wise none of anybody else's busi-
ness,

Alas, with the dawn of municipal
sewage, laudable as the goal seemed,
there emerged, almost as a side
effect, the archetypal moder munic-
ipal bureaucracy.

At least, this is what I am told by
social historians.

Conceived as a measure to con-
trol bacterial diseases, the sewage
system spawned as many bureaucrats
us it did mushrooms. And to this day,
in every city, the sewage treatment
departments constitute an indestruc-
tible hard-core hicrurchy deep in the
municipal body politic.

Most of us tend to think, casually,
that progress has been made in the
last decade or two to clean up the
most obvious, most primitive form of
pollution, ie., the untreated effluent
that pours into our waters every year.

There is a common assumption

that something is being done to suit-
ably treat the stuff goir'g down that
toilet or sink. After all, { don’t throw
out my boitles or cans or plastic or
paper, and i get rid of my hazardous
waste at the right depot.

The idca of flushing raw sewage
into the sea, or into salmon-spawning
grounds, is repugnant, and makes me
feel like I'm part of some kind of
infantile society that hasn't even
leamed to clean up its mess yet,

Weil, fellow adults, it tums out
that, nationwide, about one-fifth of
the underground torrent never passes
through a sewage treatment plant.

And this will be going on whether
you’ ve sent your donation to the eco-
group of your choice or not. The
reality is that the provincial and fed-
cra! governments tum a blind eye to
continued untreated discharge.

First, what is sewage? It's not just
human excrement, you know.
There's also grease, motor oil, paint
thinner, antifreeze and industrial
wastes of all kinds. Typical munici-
pal sewage contains something like
200 chemicals.

The National Sewage Report
Card is the sort of reading you

instinctively want to hide from the
-kids

It tells you lots of stuff you don't
have any urge whatsoever to think
about, like the fact that the
Vancouver urea, even though served
by four sewage treatment plants, still
discharges roughly 62 billion litres of
Taw sewage annually into the waters
of the Georgia Strait and the Fraser.

“Dumping raw sewage is illegal,”
the Report Card says. “Under the
federal Fisheries Act, discharge of
substances ‘deleterious to fish’ into
fish-spawning waters is a major
offence punishable by fines of up to
$1 million and/or imprisonment.

Many Canadian municipulities are
chronic offenders. Yet charges are
rarely Jaid.”

In B.C., in the 15 years between
1977 and 1993, only three prosecu-
tions were initiated by the federal
government egainst municipalities,
even though 13 different regional
districts and municipalities were sig-
nificantly out of compliance with
their permits as of March 1992; the
Greater Vancouver Regional
District's (GVRD) own sewage treat-
ment plants have been in violation of
their permits during six out of cight
test periods; und Victoria continues
to discharge all of its sewage untreat-
ed, while holding a permit that
allows it to do so,

For years, the GVIRD has admit-
ted that its discharges from treatment
plants in the Fraser River violute the
Fisheries Act. And, oh, by the way,
the shortfall in funding is at the fed-

eral end, another nauseating legacy
of Mulroncy.

He's gone now. Sooner or later,
we're going to have to get serious
about learning to clean up after our-
selves, boys and girls. Playing “See
the Poo Poo Disappear by Magic™
just isn't working.

WINDOW SCREENS i
+18

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SLIDING WINDOW MEASURED & ia
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TRACKS AND
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Labour $8.50 per

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$9.50 lined.

l ! 3
CUSTOM DRAPERIES & BLINDS
At low, low prices.

For FREE Estimates
call 987-2966

(Ask about Seniors’ Discounts)
Serving the North Shore for 23 years

Mr. David Raht and Mr. Ron Slinger are pleased fo announce that they
have made application to the District of North Vancouver to build a
neighbourhood pub, to be located on the north west corner of Lynn
Valley Centre.
“We plan to build a small, 65 seat, English style pub, with an interior
decor featuring historic memorabilia and photos of Lynn Valley.

specializing ,

in fine food and offering a wide selection

customers 19 years and older, we hope to f

| of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to

become a social focal point for the people of
Lynn Valley. Hours of operation’ 11:00 am to

midnight.”

Both Lynn Valley area residents, Mr. Raht and Mr.
Slinger opened and have operated the Queens
Cross Neighbourhood Pub, at the corner of
Queens and Lonsdale, for the past 15 years.

lf you can assist with
appropriate

memorabilia and
photos, or have any oO

further questions,

Syesect
site

LYNN
VALLEY {|

please write: SAFEWAY! | CENTRE

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