Sewage and land on the mind of city hall

A couple of stories made the news this week jn Prince Rupert, but got sideswiped by the larger issues of the day, they howerver should still be marked down for further notice, as both will be issues we'll be more than aware of over the next few years.

The City is in the process of purchasing a building on the land it owns in the Seal Cove area, across from Azalea Gardens. The Seal Cove area has long been marked as one of the key development areas that the city has on the books, but there hasn’t been much in the way of commercial or industrial action down there over the last few years. The building purchase to come (it still is locked in the ever popular in-camera phase of civic governance) , will allow the city to park its heavy machinery currently working the gravel pit at Seal Cove under cover. Seems there may be a slight vandalism problem in the Seal Cove area as the machinery is described as getting damaged out in the open.

The City also waded into the effluent over sewage on the north coast, with new boating regulations set to come into effect across the province prohibiting coastal dumping of sewage the city will not be providing a required pump out facility for boaters, considered rather silly considering the city pumps its own waste into the harbor without benefit of treatment. While there is a long term plan to eventually begin treating the wastes of Prince Rupert, it’s certainly not anything on the front burner at City Hall, so until then it’s ahoy matey don’t breathe too deeply for boaters approaching the city’s coastal area.

Both stories were covered in the Daily News and are provided below for those keeping score at home on both land and sea issues of Podunk.

KEY PIECE OF SEAL COVE LAND BACK IN THE MIX
By Leanne Ritchie
The Daily News
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Pages One and Two

The City is in the process of ending a lease on what it sees as a key piece of land, in order to house equipment down in the Seal Cove gravel pit.

Prince Rupert Mayor Herb Pond explained that the city owns the land across from the Azalea Garden Centre in Seal Cove, however it had been leasing the land to Wainwright Marine.

“We have always owned the land. The building was owned by Wainwright and they’ve leased the land and the lease was up, so we are negotiating a purchase of that building,” said Prince Rupert Mayor Herb Pond.

The deal is still being completed and has not yet been presented to the public as it took place in-camera.

Pond said they need the building for equipment storage related to the gravel pit across the way, because machinery on that site was being damaged when it was left out.

We were kind of at a crossroads, where we needed to purchase the building or the people renting needed to purchase the land and it was more in our interest to retain the land and purchase the building,” he said.

The building is currently the home of Apex Marine. Ray McInytre, owner, said they will be moving their business to the Industrial park in the near future.

While it may act as equipment storage for now, Pond said the land could be key in future development.

The city does own other land in the area, such as the Seal Cove airport, and there are government lands in Seal Cove that may become available in the future.

“Part of the planning exercise we want to go through in the next year will include a plan for Seal Cove, because Seal Cove is a potential small community unto itself,” said Pond.

The city is currently seeking funding to update its Official Community Plan, which is nearly 15 years old.

While some areas in town will not require changes, Pond said others will.

Pond explained that other areas like downtown and the waterfront will be the be the subject of much community discussion and it is likely future development in Seal Cove will also be on that list.

“It could almost be like Steveston if you are looking for examples in the Vancouver area.

It could be a really nice blend of condos and commercial and residential, or even resort recreational all in that area. There are some beautiful views and a nice living environment,” said Pond.

“There’s no reason why that area couldn’t be, as the community develops, a community centre all on its own. – a place where people can live, work, shop and go to school all within an area. It has real potential.

“But that has yet to be defined and really fully explored and that will be part of the community planning exercise we want to go through.”

CITY GETS ITS TEETH INTO SEWAGE DUMPING ISSUE
By James Vassallo
The Daily News
Monday, August 28, 2006
Page One

The city won’t don anything about new boating regulations prohibiting the dumping of sewage near coastal areas until it first tackles the tones of waste from residents heading directly into the harbour.

The new rules require all boats, within five years, to either dump their waste in the open ocean far from shore, have an on-board treatment system or deposit waste into pump-out facility, something municipalities would likely have to provide.

“I’m not aware of any plans at this time to provide that service,” said Mayor Herb Pond. “And until we start treating our sewage, it would be almost ridiculous. We would be taking from a holding tank, pumping it into our sewage system and directly into the ocean.”

The federal government is aiming for cities to improve their track records on sewage in the next five years as well, creating a situation in 2011 where communities would stop relying on the nation’s waterways to take away untreated waste. In Sierra Legal’s 2004 National Sewage Report Card, researchers graded 22 cities around the country for their sewage treatment practices. The worst was the beautiful seaside city of Victoria, which dumps 34 billion litres of raw sewage into the ocean every year. Prince Rupert follows the same practice, but with much smaller levels.

“We’re in the active planning stage and because of the planning we’re doing we’re in full compliance,” said Pond. “We’re analyzing how we can most cost-effectively begin to reduce our flow of raw sewage into the harbour.”

The challenge facing Prince Rupert comes mainly from the city’s age and the fact that several drains combine storm drain and sanitary sewers. While the newer sections of the city have two separate systems, other parts do not.

With our huge rainfall events, if you begin a biological treatment pond as soon as you have rain, it completely eliminates the effectiveness, you’d be constantly re-establishing it,” he said. “We’ve got considerable obstacles to overcome but that’s what planning is all about. As we grow out, we want to come up with solutions to begin nipping away at it.”

On top of that, various areas of town are not interconnected, meaning there are a number of sewage outfalls at different places around Kaien Island.

“Some of them are dispensing sewage very well, the tidal flush is great,” said Pond.

There’s no magic about primary and secondary sewage treatment. It only accelerates what would happen in the ocean anyway. The ocean is a great recycler of sewage material as long as you don’t over tax it.

The current studies the city has undergone are providing a glimpse of just what has to be done and the millions of dollars the project will cost – something that will likely be funded through a federal-provincial-municipal cost sharing. Due to the complexity of the Rupert system, this will likely mean multiple sewage facilities as well as laying new pipe.

“The attitude we need to take in planning is that any improvement is good improvement if we can take an active step that reduces the worst impacts,” he said. “Even as we grow if we hold the public line and began to slowly push back and get a little improvement each year, it would be a real positive.”