I see "our" real issues not so much with the proposed new infrastructure. It will be brand new, meet modern standards and, knowing CRD, often enough be over the top (golden plated mentality by CRD). There are certainly challenging tasks within this project as siting constraints and esthetics as nobody wants to see an unappealing wastewater treatment plant when entering the harbour on an cruise ship for instance. A challenge will be the trenchless installation of the inflow sewer underneath the harbour mouth. They could hit rock or who knows what down there while pipe jacking. Securing a suitable right-of-way for the sludge pipe to Hartland will not be easy as no one wants this thing in their backyard. The earthquake risk associated with these main pipelines seems low to me as I would expect them to use welded HDPE pipe which is very flexible and shock absorbent.
The real concern I have has more to do with the existing sewer infrastructure. Firstly, it was not built to drain to one central treatment site and therefore the costly struggle now to reroute and partly treat here and there. It would have been way smarter and cheaper to design this all in one sweep way back when there was land available and not every corner along the coast built-out. And secondly, the condition of our existing sewer infrastructure is not good. Our sewers leak all over the place, are underdesigned in places and for the purpose of draining to one treatment location often run into the wrong direction. All municipalities are hugely behind in catching up with this deteriorating infrastructure and because it's underground and you can't detect small defects easily like on roads, it has been conveniently ignored over decades. Greater Victoria could have easily needed a $1billion to fix the existing sewer system issues. So to me building a $1billion state of the art treatment system to achieve a high level of effluent quality seems hypocritial when you lose a good percentage of your raw sewage inflow through leaks on the way to your treatment facility. But not only losing sewage is a problem but also creating more sewage along the way through infiltration and inflow of originally clean rain or groundwater which becomes sewage as soon as it enters the sewer pipes through leaks. Therefore Victoria is currently generating way more sewage than it actually does and without addressing this the CRD will have to design and build a treatment plant that is way bigger than it would need to be if the sewers were in good shape. Bigger means more money out of our pockets. I am afraid that the CRD and the municipalities think they are done with the work after the new treatment system is in place and a lot of money has been spent and forget that they only addressed half of the issues.
