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Metro Vancouver has beaten the rap on charges its Lions Gate sewage treatment plant illegally pollutes Burrard Inlet with fish-killing effluent.
A private prosecution launched by environmental groups and fishermen was quashed last week by federal prosecutors who took over the case and stayed the charges.
Environmentalists are outraged.
“If the federal government is not going to enforce its environmental protection laws, and they won’t let private citizens do it, who is going to protect the environment right now?” demanded Christianne Wilhelmson of the Georgia Strait Alliance.
Continuing the prosecution wouldn’t have been in the public interest, nor would there have been a likelihood of conviction, federal officials indicated without elaborating.
The groups alleged Lions Gate effluent repeatedly failed toxicity tests over a five-year period.
“A judge had looked at our evidence and deemed it was strong enough to set trial dates,” Wilhelmson said. “Yet the federal government can swoop down and say ‘No, we don’t think so’ and not explain why.”
A separate private prosecution against Metro Vancouver is still under way over effluent flowing into Georgia Strait from its Iona sewage treatment plant, but could also be quashed.
“We don’t believe we’re polluting, we don’t believe we violated any regulation or standard,” responded Surrey Coun. Marvin Hunt, Metro Vancouver’s waste management chair.
The court action came the same day Metro Vancouver officials confirmed what Black Press first reported last month – they are pursuing former B.C. Rail land in North Vancouver District as the site for a new sewage treatment plant to replace 46-year-old Lions Gate.
Metro Vancouver is negotiating with the province, which owns the former Passenger Station lands, and plans to consult residents and other affected parties.
“We want to be open and up front about it all,” Hunt said. “This is the land we’re looking at.”
He hopes a new plant there could be operational in 12 to 15 years, accelerating an earlier target of 2030 to deliver improved secondary sewage treatment on the North Shore.
“We’re certainly going to do our best to speed that up,” he said, but cautioned the process to build the new water filtration plant on the North Shore has spanned more than 10 years, and the region already owned the property.
Hunt also noted the region got only one-sixth of the money from senior governments for the water project, and now wants them to provide two-thirds financing for the new sewage plant – as they have committed to do with a major sewage upgrade in Victoria.
He estimates the Lions Gate plant replacement at $200 to $300 million.
Lions Gate and Iona are the two remaining plants in the region with only primary sewage treatment, which can’t filter out contaminants like PCBs and metals that then accumulate in sea life.
Wilhelmson said she’s pleased with the faster pace to upgrade to secondary treatment, adding the prosecution and political pressure on the region clearly helped.
She also says the region should consider a series of smaller sewage plants on the North Shore, rather than a single big replacement.
More small plants may be cheaper and offer more scope to capture heat from sewage to heat local buildings, and to recapture water.
“This isn’t dream-level technology – it’s in use in cities around the world,” Wilhelmson said. “Going out and buying land before you’ve looked into what the right sewage system should be is painting yourself into a corner.”
Hunt called it a “possibility” but not a high probability.
He said placing a plant too far east, where discharges into Burrard Inlet would tend to stay trapped there rather than circulate out to sea, would be ecologically unsound.