SHAME ON YOU VICTORIA, i wont be planning any trips there

[isac777]

http://seattletimes.com/html/editorials ... itxml.html

having been to victoria a couple of times and wanting to go diving up there soon i am now reconsidering. Being in the wastewater industry i was surprised to hear that victoria only uses "simple screenings" of raw sewage, dumping a gray plume right into our back yard. I see what is in sewer and im sure if you guys knew or thought about it you would want to do any skills in it either. I am now reconsidering taking a diving trip there. Just my 2 million gallons of raw sewage cents..thought i might enlighten the forum but it seems as though the new plant is stuck in bureaucracy...SMH

[Dusty2]

Same political crap there as here! pun intended

[Grateful Diver]

Blame it on the "all taxes are bad" political mentality that pervades both sides of the border. I'm also in the wastewater treatment industry ... and there is no "cheap" option. The old-school thinking that has been used throughout the world since the '50's is "the solution to pollution is dilution". But in a world that's doubled its population over the past five decades, while at the same time using up its planetary resources at an unsustainable rate, that approach simply doesn't work anymore.

Bottom line is that elected officials are afraid that if they raise taxes to pay for an expensive wastewater treatment plant, they'll get voted out of office. They're probably right. Just like we have on this side of the border, there are plenty of people up there who would rather crap on their neighbors than pay to clean up their own mess.

And FWIW - it ain't Victoria's fault. If you read the article, you'd see that it was the City of Esquimalt that quashed the permit. That's like blaming Seattle for something that happened in Bellevue ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

[CaptnJack]

A number of our NW species are heavily impacted by persistent, bioaccumulative chemicals. Chinook, Orcas, harbor seals, Osprey, its a pretty long list. Mercury and PCBs are 2 of the worst offenders. While I agree that dilution probably is adequate to attenuate their nutrient inputs, PCBs are mercury are not just harmlessly washing out to the Pacific. I know what our influent concentrations of PCBs, mercury and PBDEs are and the thought of them being willfully discharged to the Strait without even the loosest of secondary treatment makes me shudder.

[Dusty2]

Sadly they have no EPA to force compliance to modern standards. It's a given that local governments will just continue business as usual as long as there is no regulatory agency to force them to take action for the very reason Bob mentioned. Without state or federal government to force compliance and take the blame no elected offical will take action because it is political suicide. Don't like the taxes? Go to a third world country and venture out of the tourist areas and see what your world would look like without them.

[ljjames]

it took forever and a day for us to get secondary treatment as well...

http://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exh ... tal-health

this meeting took place in 1977

http://video.seattle.gov:8080/podcasts/ ... /11487.mp3

our west point secondary treatment plant was finished in 1996

[CaptnJack]

it took forever and a day for us to get secondary treatment as well...

http://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/exh ... tal-health

this meeting took place in 1977

http://video.seattle.gov:8080/podcasts/ ... /11487.mp3

our west point secondary treatment plant was finished in 1996

Yes although the whole Eastside had secondary treatment starting when South Plant was completed in 1965, almost 50 yrs ago... Although the secondary effluent did initially discharge into the Green River and was only later piped to the outfall at Alki.

West Point was much harder to upgrade because its a combined system with immense peak flows. Engineering for that started in the 1980s even though the modifications which the satellite plants required along with its own secondary process wasn't fully operational until 1996.

Local seattle history here:
http://www.kingcounty.gov/environment/w ... grams.aspx

Victoria isn't even in the design phase.

[ljjames]

Thanks for that link Richard, more excellent history

Secondary treatment doesn't take everything out tho, right? There is still a nutrient load of sorts? Advanced secondary treatment is what makes the 'reclaimed' water and that's only a small percentage. I mean one look at the stuff coming out if the les Davis pooper pipeline and you know that's not just plain water.

[CaptnJack]

Well nothing treats "everything"

Secondary treatment is considered to include enhanced solids removal and enhanced biological treatment. Primary is basically just making sure there's no floaties, everything else goes out the outfall. Even in secondary treatment, the nutrients are for all practical purposes still there. Its not just West Point and South Plant of course there are hundreds of secondary treatment plants throughout Puget Sound, Redondo, Vashon, Tacoma, Everett, Bremerton, Bainbridge, Manchester, seriously hundreds. Most using activated sludge secondary processes, some trickling filters and other strategies to meet a general "secondary" treatment standard. The sludge aka biosolids from these processes is composted and land applied mostly in Eastern WA or to forest lands. In the case of King County its about 200,000 tons a year of biosolids. Sum from all the Puget Sound plants I don't know how much biosolids is generated by Puegtropolis, but its a lot.

Even scaling for population, that's a huge amount of shit (with associated metals, mercury, PCBs etc) that the Victoria metro area just magically dilutes into the Strait. Too bad the water quality standards for PCBs are measured in parts per quadrillion, that's 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000 (15 zeros), 9 orders of magnitude below where metals concentrations are measured (parts per million or only 6 zeros) :(

The membrane bioreactor (MBR) in Woodinville (discharges near Edmonds) and the MBR in Carnation (discharging to the Snoqualmie) are considered tertiary treatment, even better solids removal 99% and slightly improved biological treatment. There's also an MBR in Olympia and another in Spokane. They are not cheap plants to run and there's really no practical way to put tertiary treatment on a plant the size of West Point (100 million gallons a day). The land required and the energy/carbon emissions would be obscene. They produce water suitable for agricultural use and stuff like that. Actually some of the secondary plants do as well. I know South Plant reuses some of their effluent on nearby golf courses, and Bremerton plus Olympia do as well, that reuse water is produced using sand filters (not MBRs). Someday the Woodinville plant (aka Brightwater) is going to be supplying reusable water to the Sammamish Valley to help avoid the use of Sammamish River water for agriculture and golf courses (leaving the river water in the River) In SoCal this would be a shoo-in project, they have tons of water reuse plants/projects all over. Up here, its a harder sell. The River water is cheap, easy, and a known thing (it comes from irrigation wells near the river). Getting people to switch to reused water is not a slam dunk.

Enough rambling, I am annoyed that "dilution" on the scale for Victoria is still justified for bioaccumulative pollutants that are known problems in the Orcas in Haro Strait... Actually I only hear that dilution is adequate for Victoria's nutrients, and it might be, I have seen zero analysis for PCBs, mercury or PBDEs in their effluent, nevermind the fate of these contaminants.

[Desert Diver]

CaptnJack, Why do you say it is too bad that water quality standards for PCB's are measured in parts per quadrillion?

[spatman]

Really informative, Richard. Thanks for posting.