Letter - Sewage sites and safety

Beacon. My right to comment is based on my having a degree in Municipal Engineering from Manchester University, having worked for 14 years with a firm of consulting engineers who did nothing else but design, prepare contract documents and oversee construction of sewage treatment plants and 18 years with our Province's Pollution Control Branch. I assessed the original application for a permit to use our long outfall system and recommended it be authorized.

My opinion is that to build a plant to replace out long outfall system would be to take a step backwards for the environment, certainly so if one includes health and safety in 'environment' and massively so if one allows for the loss of benefit that the money could have achieved in other directions. The opinions of the medical health officers, biologists and oceanographers who have been involved is, I believe, not much different. Nobody seems to bother about them. Nobody seems to understand the impact of a contract involving a great deal of excavation in a place where the rock is often just below the surface. Nobody bothers about permanent injuries, but there will be many of them, and this project is not worth one.

I am grown seriously old but would be pleased to meet in my house with any group who would like to do so. The reasons for my views are easily explained. Meanwhile, read my booklet, 'Victoria's Sewage Circus' available in our libraries or (members.shaw.ca/sewagecircus).

J.E. (Ted) Dew-Jones. P.Eng.