West Coast Serves on Metro Vancouver’s Liquid Waste Management Reference Panel
West Coast serves on Metro Vancouver’s Liquid Waste Management Reference Panel, providing advice to Metro Vancouver on its draft Liquid Waste Management Plan. It has now come down to the deciding moment for a critical sustainability issue – whether Metro (and senior governments) will commit to upgrading two sewage plants by 2020, OR only Lion’s Gate plant by 2020, with Iona Island’s advance treatment upgrade postponed until 2030. The latter would mean Iona Island’s plant would continue for another 20 years to discharge effluent into the Georgia Strait that has received primary treatment only. Not great news for our already troubled waters.
In late November, the Board sidestepped approving the latest draft of the Plan, which the Board’s Waste Management Committee had, with great leadership, forwarded to the Board for approval with a recommended amendment that would see upgrades to both the Iona Island and Lion's Gate waste water treatment plants by 2020. Instead of approving the Plan, the Board referred the matter to its Finance Committee.
On Friday, the Reference Panel made the case to the Finance Committee on why both upgrades are needed by 2020 and how this might be accomplished. Please read the Panel's comments.
Please also support a Georgia Strait Alliance petition asking the federal government to provide financial support to Metro Vancouver's sewage treatment upgrades. Both senior governments need to provide financial support for these important upgrades!
For more about the Reference Panel’s recommendations, read the Reference Panel’s “Final Report” from June 2009 which urged a re-write of the Plan; and the Panel’s comments on the re-written Final Plan released in November 2009.
