Editor:
The recent plethora of coordinated letters supporting Sechelt council's Ebbtide wastewater plant makes for lively reading even if facts are invented in the process. Interestingly, a curiously high percentage of those writers don't appear in the phone book or on-line as living in Sechelt, suggesting many are using pseudonyms. One wonders why?
Much ado is made of the fact that I live in Halfmoon Bay, rather than in Sechelt, as if residency is linked to critical thinking. It is not. If you see a neighbour's house on fire it's your responsibility to warn your neighbour out of concern for their safety. Raising legitimate concerns on issues that affect all Coastal residents is an act of responsible citizenship. Some don't like the message. Some don't like the messenger. I can handle both.
Sechelt has two sewage treatment sites: the too-small Ebbtide site and the bio-solids facility at upper Dusty Road. With Ebbtide, in the dense urban core, too small to handle future needs and conscious of the lease termination, Sechelt sensibly purchased Lot L, which is large enough to consolidate all sewage treatment functions on a single site. Building on Lot L would be more cost effective and would allow for selling most of Ebbtide for residential development with those revenues helping to pay for Lot L.
The December 2010 bio-solids processing options report done for the District by Urban Systems opens with: "The report examines the options for diverting bio-solids (sludge) from the two exiting sewage treatment plants to a site where it can be properly processed. The site (referred to as the Lot L site) is to ultimately become the site for a single new central sewage treatment facility."
So why are we building at Ebbtide?
Jef Keighley, Halfmoon Bay
