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LOWER MAINLAND – The Greater Vancouver Regional District will likely review the timing of upgrades for two controversial sewage treatment plans, a regional official said Thursday, after environmental groups laid a second pollution charge over sewage discharges into coastal waters.
The two plants are scheduled for upgrades by 2020 and 2030, but that will be reviewed next year, said Fred Nenninger, the GVRD’s division manager for regional utility planning.
The private charge, claiming the GVRD’s Iona treatment plant in Richmond regularly violates the Fisheries Act with toxic discharges, was sworn by Sierra Legal investigator Doug Chapman.
The charge, which also names the provincial government, is backed by the Georgia Strait Alliance, the T. Buck Suzuki Environmental Foundation, the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union-CAW, and Sierra Legal.
It follows a provincial order to Victoria to start treating the raw sewage it now dumps into the ocean, and another private charge sworn against the GVRD’s Lions Gate sewage treatment plant in North Vancouver.
“The largest single pollution source in Georgia Strait is the Iona outfall, and it struck us that Vancouver desperately needs to clean up its act,” David Lane, executive director of the T. Buck Suzuki Foundation, said in an interview. “The trend all across Canada is to move to secondary treatment or better.
“It’s been the law in the United States for a decade. It’s been implemented in the European Union as of 2005, and we believe it’s about time that Greater Vancouver woke up to what the reality is in most of the developed world.”
The region operates five sewage treatment plants. The Iona and Lions Gate plants are the only ones that do not provide secondary treatment. Long-term plans now call for the Iona plant to be upgraded to secondary treatment by 2020, and the Lions Gate plan by 2030.
The region’s liquid waste management plan is reviewed every five years and the next review is due in 2007, Nenninger said. “The question of timing of upgrades will probably be part of that review.”