Replies

“...there have been several dozen studies on the question you raise...”

Then you should have no trouble directing me to one of them.

“...the paltry amount of nutrients and waste pumped into the strait is insignificant...”

Well, I wouldn’t call 120 million liters per day paltry or insignificant.

“...you cannot even detect the presence of the outflow until you are within 30 feet of it...”

Directly contradicted by the Victoria Capital Regional District’s own data. And don’t you think that currents or biological activity could transport pollutants or toxins?

“...due to the shouts, screams and cries of the uninformed masses like yourself and the enviro-weenies...”

You know, generally when one resorts to ad hominem attacks, it could be said their argument lacks, shall we say, veracity? All that aside, I’m somehow gratified when folks refrain from pouring their shit in a common resource like water, aren’t you?

Let me put it this way: I’ve actually dived to the outflow.

Here’s http://www.crd.bc.ca/wastewater/documents/tor_review_panel.pdf

one study.

Remember that the CRD is a group of small time civic bureaucrats who have only their own self aggrandizement and delusionary agendas in mind.

EG: The local reservoir was expanded so it’s big enough to support a city 3 times the size of Victoria, but we still have watering restrictions in place. Now CRD Water is whining that we aren’t using enough water, so they’re going to raise our rates.

If grouping you in with the uninformed Luddites who share your view is ad hominem, so be it.

Here’s an example of their mentality
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f0c_1179385159

The people who keep bringing this stuff up are the usual suspects: The Sierra Club, the Georgia Strait Alliance, etc.

Here’s a chapter on the “problem” by an associate prof at UVIC:

http://nisoftware.com/sewage-circus/chap10.html

Here’s the entire compilation of the Sewage Circus the above chapter came from.

http://nisoftware.com/sewage-circus/index.html

Enjoy your read and get back to me.

This might help shed some light on the subject:

http://www.rstv.ca/marine-pollution-bulletin-edit/

I agree with the points that Don W made (excepting the ad hominem remarks).

It’s highly misleading to cite the volume of sewage, without any mention of the concentration. Over 95% of “raw” sewage is just water — water for flushing, water for washing clothes, water for showers, etc.

Unlike a lot of places, low-flush toilets aren’t mandated in Victoria — so most aren’t. If we had low-flush toilets, there would be a substantial drop in the volume of sewage — would anything have changed?

There is already primary treatment of sewage in Victoria. Well over 90% of the solids are removed before the sewage pumped out. In addition, there is a very effective program for removing heavy metals and other contaminants at source. For instance, car washes are required to filter and recycle their water.

The sewage is pumped into the strait, where very powerful tidal currents dilute it millions of times over. The sewage decomposes rapidly, and contributes useful nutrients to the ocean.

Perceptions trump reality nearly every time — and we know when we’ve been beaten. So, as Don W says, we’ll soon be spending gigabucks on an unnecessary treatment plant. (The estimated cost has already jumped to triple initial government estimates, and over 6 times what environmental lobby groups claimed the costs would be. The final costs are likely to be much higher.)

(BTW, to answer Don W’s question in another post — I don’t know any of the researchers mentioned in the article.)

I’d like to apologize to both of you. I was a bit testy earlier in our conversation.

I did a bit more research, and learned that the strait is as deep as 980 feet, with an average flow speed of 1 foot per second. At 20 or so miles wide off the Victoria shore, that makes 120 million liters per day pretty insignificant.

Let’s say that the strait is “only” 200 feet deep (that’s the depth of the outfall. It’s also 105200 feet wide (20 miles), and that water is flowing by at 1 fps. Therefore, 105200*200=21,040,000 cubic feet per second.

120 million liters is 31.66 million gallons.
That’s 5.277 million cubic feet.

So, the total outflow from Victoria’s drains in 24 hours works out to about 1/4 of a second’s worth of flow past any given point in the strait.

That puts in into somewhat better perspective, I think.