I had NO idea that Canada was pouring their raw sewage into OUR Puget Sound waters.

Thoughts:

Victorians think their sh*t don’t stink

They are hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics adding who knows how many more tourists (= poop) resulting in more effluent being discharged into OUR waters…..Wonder how many tourists will feel good about that!

Greater Victoria to Stop Flushing Untreated Sewage
Associated Press

SEATTLE – After years of bad headlines — including a campaign by “Mr. Floatie” — the British Columbia capital of Victoria plans to stop pouring millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the marine waters between Vancouver Island and Washington state.

Regional politicians last week approved a $1.2 billion plan to build four treatment plants to handle about 34 million gallons of raw sewage that Victoria and six suburbs pump into the Strait of Juan de Fuca each day. The cities are home to about 300,000 people.

“It’s the first time we’ve had the region say, ‘It’s the direction we’re going to go in,”‘ said Christianne Wilhelmson, with the Georgia Strait Alliance, which has pushed for sewage treatment for years.

Environmentalists say the treatment should improve the marine environment and public health. Others, however, argue the money could be better spent elsewhere, and that sewage pumped into the strait is sufficiently diluted by water and fast-moving currents. The strait separates the island from Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and leads to Puget Sound.

For years, the effluent issue has been a sore point on both sides of the border, contrasting with Victoria’s self-promotion as a tourist center, a gateway to the wilderness forests and rugged marine coast of Vancouver Island, and a city of prim and proper homes, shops, gardens and tea rooms worthy of its royal namesake.

“It’s the only city in Canada where people resolutely cling to the notion that Victorian waste is different from other waste,” said Lara Tessaro, a staff attorney with Ecojustice in Canada.

Efforts to shame politicians into adopting sewage treatment were marked by a humorous yet failed attempt by Mr. Floatie — the 7-foot-tall brown-clad mascot for POOP, People Opposed to Outfall Pollution — to run for mayor of Victoria.

Environmentalists say untreated sewage contains toxic chemicals, heavy metals and other contaminants that pollute waters and harm aquatic life. It’s also one of many sources contaminating the region’s killer whales, they say.

In 2006, the British Columbia government ordered the Victoria area to develop a sewage treatment plan.

“Since then, it’s been, ‘How do we move ahead?”‘ said Andy Orr, a spokesman for Capital Regional District, the government for 13 municipalities on the southern end of Vancouver Island.

A cleaner image couldn’t come at a better time for British Columbia, which is hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Vancouver, on the mainland east of Victoria, treats its sewage.

“Victoria’s reputation has been tarnished by our sewage treatment,” said Dean Fortin, who became Victoria’s mayor last fall. “This is our opportunity to move forward.”

Washington state Sen. Kevin Ranker, whose district is in his state’s San Juan Islands just a few miles to the southeast, said treatment is long overdue.

“It will be a real shame if we bring hundreds of thousands of people to the region for the Olympics and you have that sort of environmental scar,” he said. “This is an easy fix.”

Tessaro said the turning point came in 2006 with emerging scientific evidence.

An independent scientific report commissioned by the area’s municipalities concluded that relying on water dilution and tidal currents is “not a long-term answer to waste disposal.” The province also released a report that found contamination of the seabed around sewer outfalls.

Last week, the capital district’s sewage committee voted to build four plants in Esquimalt, Saanich East, the West Shore and Clover Point, Victoria. The plants could be online by 2016.

The plants would be built to secondary treatment levels or beyond, said Dwayne Kalynchuk, the district’s project director. Municipal wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. are generally required by law to use primary and secondary treatment.

Sewage from the Victoria area currently is screened for solid objects larger than about a quarter inch, but it isn’t treated beyond that. The wastewater is pumped out of two outfalls that run about 213 feet deep and about a mile into the strait.

Despite the mandate, some in the Victoria area say the risks are minimal, the costs of waste treatment far exceed the benefits and money is better spent on controlling contaminants such as mercury before they enter the system.

“There’s no measurable public health risks,” said Dr. Shaun Peck, a former CRD medical health officer and member of Responsible Sewage Treatment Victoria, citing other studies.

Andrea Copping, a U.S. biological oceanographer who has studied the issue for years, said she didn’t find too much to be concerned about — except right at the outfalls.

“Scientifically, the impacts are fairly small,” said Copping, with the Sequim, Wash.-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Marine Sciences Lab. “In terms of risk to marine environments, it’s not one of the major risks. It’s not that it’s a zero risk. There are things that are likely to be more harmful.”

But environmentalists say it’s a pollution source that can be fixed.

“We’re slowly, along with other pressures, changing what’s happening in our environment,” said Wilhelmson. “Once you cross that line, it’s going to be too late.”

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco-Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com

Ocean Trash Problem Far From Being Resolved, UN Says:
By John D. Sutter . CNN

The world’s oceans are full of trash, causing “tremendous” negative impacts on coastal life and ecology, according to a U.N. report released Monday.

Trash clutters the world’s oceans, as shown here near Hong Kong.

The oceans will continue to fill up with junk discarded from cities and boats without urgent action to address this buildup of marine debris, the United Nations Environment Programme says in a report titled “Marine Litter: A Global Challenge.”

Current efforts to address the problem are not working, and the issue is “far from being solved,” the report says.

“There is an increasingly urgent need to approach the issue of marine litter through better enforcement of laws and regulations, expanded outreach and educational campaigns, and the employment of strong economic instruments and incentives,” the report says.

“Although a number of countries have taken steps at the national level to deal with marine litter, the overall situation is not improving.”

Scientists have been watching trash pile up in the world’s oceans for about a half-century, when plastics came into widespread use. Since plastics don’t biodegrade, or do so very slowly, the trash tends to remain in the ocean, where circling currents collect the material in several marine “garbage patches.” See a map of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch »

One of these trashy areas is said to be roughly the size of Texas. The water in these at-sea landfills is thick like a plastic soup, oceanographers told CNN.

The trash patches are located in “very remote parts of the ocean where hardly anyone goes, except the occasional research vessel,” said Peter Niiler, a distinguished researcher and oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Plastics and cigarette butts are the most common types of ocean litter, with plastic making up about 80 percent of the ocean trash collected in some areas of the world, a U.N. news release says.

The ocean litter is a problem for coastal communities, which rely on clean beaches for tourism dollars and to boost quality of life for their residents, the report says. Ocean trash also affects marine life and degrades human health.

Sea turtles, for example, think plastic grocery bags are jellyfish when the bags are floating in the ocean. An untold number of the turtles and other creatures, such as Hawaii’s endangered monk seal, swallow the bags and suffocate, drown or starve, said Holly Bamford, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine debris program.

Birds face similar issues when they eat pieces of plastic out of the water. In the North Sea, a survey found 94 percent of fulmars, a type of seabird, had plastics in their stomachs, the U.N. report says. The birds, on average, had about 34 pieces of plastic in their stomachs.

A surprising amount of trash that ends up in the ocean starts on the land, the report says. In Australia, for instance, a survey found 80 percent of ocean trash starts on the land.

One of the key questions for people interested in ocean trash is how much of it is out there, but Monday’s U.N. report does not solve that mystery.

The U.N. says little is known about the extent of litter in the oceans, and more data is needed for the problem to be adequately addressed.

“This deficiency, in combination with the lack of specific legislation, adequate law enforcement and funding, are the primary reasons why the problem of marine litter is far from being solved,” the report says.

“Unless effective action is taken, the global marine litter problem will only continue to worsen in the years to come.”

The report does suggest several solutions, among them:

**Countries and regions should adopt long-term plans to prevent litter from ending up in the oceans.

**Countries should monitor marine litter using international standards and methodologies.

**Ports should encourage fishing boats not to discard nets at sea.

**Efforts to reduce marine litter should get more funding.

Volunteer efforts try to address the issue now, and the Ocean Conservancy says it organizes the largest of these.

Last year, 400,000 volunteers from more than 100 countries picked up 6.8 million pounds of trash from beaches, preventing it from harming the ocean, said Tom McCann, a spokesman for the group.

“It’s entirely preventable,” he said of the problem. “It’s something we can solve ourselves.”

McCann said people can prevent trash from ending up in the ocean by making smarter choices about the products they buy.

Some of the Ocean Conservancy’s recommendations include:

**Buy products with smart packaging that doesn’t create excess waste.

**Use alternatives to plastic such as cloth grocery bags and reusable bottles.

**Don’t litter. Trash can make its way from the interior of a continent into the oceans via rivers and the wind.

**Volunteer with the International Coastal Cleanup, held on September 19 this year.

Rebecca
Country Meadow Ltd.
Eco-Friendly Shea Butter Spa Products

www.countrymeadowltd.com