Although council can still approve it, the District of Sechelt’s public works committee last week voted down a proposal to begin planning for a biochar research project aimed at establishing a new “best practice” for wastewater treatment in the province.
The experiment would determine whether the process could effectively remove hormones, pharmaceuticals and other organic contaminants from reclaimed wastewater and biosolids, Sechelt Water Resource Centre project manager Paul Nash told the committee on April 22.
Collectively known as endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs), the contaminants are not yet considered a health issue but “have been proven to be an environmental problem in certain situations where you’ve got municipal effluent going into streams, sensitive wetlands and things like that,” Nash said.
“It certainly is a perceived problem when we go to reuse the water or the biosolids … especially for growing food,” he said.
Langara College has offered to partner on the project, and a Golder Associates environmental engineer would be the lead consultant. Last year, the project was awarded funding from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities Green Municipal Fund for 50 per cent of the project costs up to $169,000.
About $100,000 would be spent this year — half of it from the District — if the first phase of the project goes ahead, and the request before the committee was to approve a budget of $15,000 to prepare an overall work plan and cost estimate.
In his report, Nash said there are no Canadian standards for treatment or removal of EDCs, and Coun. Doug Wright asked how the success of the project would be measured.
“We could measure success by what we see being removed,” Nash said. While there is no government requirement to remove EDCs to a specified level in Canada, he added, “such a standard actually does exist in Australia,” where processes include ozonation and filtering through activated carbon.
Wright was not convinced.
“One of the difficulties I have with this process is we’re taking $169,000 of taxpayers’ money and we’re doing an experiment,” he said. “As I look through the mandate of a municipal government, I don’t see experiment listed in there.”
Coun. Alice Lutes agreed.
“We’re not in the business of research,” she said. “If Langara’s interested in this, they can stand alone. I don’t think they need the District of Sechelt to be part of the program.”
Coun. Darnelda Siegers spoke in favour of approving the $15,000 to prepare the work plan, noting the District’s share would only be half that amount.
“Doing this project, in my mind, requires we do a shift of thinking from wastewater to water resource,” Siegers said. “We will have water to reuse, but we have to look at how we can make that water the best resource possible.”
The committee voted 2-2 to recommend approval of the $15,000, with Siegers and chair Darren Inkster in favour and Wright and Lutes opposed, defeating the motion.
The motion could be reconsidered at the May 6 council meeting.
Mayor Bruce Milne said Wednesday that a post-completion review of the treatment plant project — one of the key recommendations from the Auditor General for Local Government — would not stop council from taking a second look at the biochar proposal.
“It’s absolutely unrelated to the wastewater facility. It’s a stand-alone research project that will not affect or impact the operation of the facility or the effluent coming out in any way whatsoever,” Milne said. “This review won’t affect our thinking on that, at all.”
