I AM COMPLICIT: I AM A COMPLI$#!T I moved to Victoria to attend the University of Victoria, and like many people my decision was based in part on the incredibly beautiful environment of Vancouver Island. I have been visiting the Island with my family since I was a kid, on summer canoeing ventures that would take us out in to the Gulf Islands and the other stunning national parks that surround the island. Always we would stay for a day or so in Victoria to visit friends, and it was during those visits that I fell in love with this town. One day after moving here I was down by the ocean with one of my local friends, and I suggested we be daring and go for a swim. My friend had such a shocked look on his face, and told me that he never went for a swim around Victoria because some days the raw sewage that is pumped out into the ocean makes its way back to our shores. It was then that I learned the ugly truth about Victoria. Victoria has been dumping raw sewage into the ocean since 1894. It is the year 2010, we are well into the 21st century and yet our town still can’t get it together to treat our sewage. We just approved of a plan to dismantle our beloved Blue Bridge and replace it with a shiny new one at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, and yet we still have made no headway on the issue of sewage treatment. I am complicit in this travesty. I, every day, add to the untold mass of raw sewage that is dumped into traditional waters of the Coast Salish. This issue is not taken seriously, not like building a shiny new bridge, and so in taking my photo I found myself unable to be serious. The fact that we are in the 21st century and yet still are mindlessly dumping toxic waste into our environment is madness. I love Vancouver Island and all the amazing park lands that surround it, but I am afraid I must leave, because to continue being complicit in the destruction of everything that was magical about my childhood summers is, to me, insanity. I am done with insanity! Bring on sanitation! |
You chose an excellent reason! We are all complicit in this way. It is ridiculous and embarrassing that our sewage has been going into the ocean.
ReplyDeleteVictoria doesn't dump raw sewage into the ocean. It diffuses the liquid portion of the waste (nothing bigger than 6mm) into the ocean, in areas where currents take it out to the deep ocean the vast majority of the time. This waste is highly diluted, and is over 90% water. The problems with raw sewage are mostly not from human "wastes" but more from the other stuff that finds its way down the drain... Heavy metals, detergents, chemicals, drugs etc. Secondary treatment can't remove all of those things either, and then you are left with a solid "sludge" who's composition is not really known, and it will most likely get dumped into the ocean anyways. Or maybe burned to create "green" energy, thus releasing all those chemicals into the air.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, Victoria (the CRD) IS putting in secondary sewage treatment... Go for a walk in Haro woods and see what they have cut down for the future sewage treatment plant.
There are definitely 2 sides to the argument, sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't kinda deal.