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RICHMOND, B.C.—The Iona sewage-treatment plant dumped the equivalent of more than 80,000 Olympic-size swimming pools of sewage into the Strait of Georgia in 2005, environmentalists said yesterday as they filed a private charge alleging Fisheries Act violations.
“Iona is the largest sewage-treatment plant in the Greater Vancouver Regional District and has arguably the greatest pollution impact on the Georgia Strait of any single source of pollution here,” Sierra Legal Defence Fund lawyer Lara Tessaro said.
Environmentalists want the government to upgrade the Iona plant to secondary-treatment standards, which would reduce the toxicity of the sewage that flows into coastal waters. They say that it will cost a fraction of the money that will be spent staging the 2010 Winter Olympics and that it’s a matter of priority for the provincial government. The regional district has five sewage-treatment plants, three of which offer secondary treatment.
Secondary treatment would remove more than 90 per cent of toxic substances found in the sewage discharge, which is made of human waste, micro-organisms, pathogens, heavy metals and chemicals.
Environmental investigator Douglas Chapman laid a charge before a justice of the peace in Provincial Court against the Greater Vancouver Regional District and the Province of B.C.
“It’s outrageous that they don’t have secondary treatment,” Mr. Chapman said outside the court.
British Columbia is far behind the rest of Canada, the U.S. and Europe, said David Lane, executive director of the Suzuki Environmental Foundation.
“Legally, secondary treatment is the standard. But Greater Vancouver got an exception.”
The GVRD tests the effluent levels every month. Over the past two years, the Iona plant has failed about one-third of the tests, the groups said.
“There’s not enough oxygen to feed the fish and so they die in the test and secondary treatment would fix that right up,” Mr. Chapman said.
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FYI…Doug Chapman is the Fraser Riverkeeper, one of Canada’s 10 Waterkeepers fighting for clean water.