Wastewater Planning Update:
The Core Area wastewater project has completed the Options Development Phase by submitting an amendment to the Liquid Waste Management Plan. The Project has now moved into the Planning Phase. The remainder of the planning work and community engagement on the Eastside will be directed through the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee.
This site is no longer being updated, but its contents will remain throughout the site as a visible record of the work of the Eastside Select Committee and the siting and option set consultation with Eastside Communities.
Eastside Siting Consultation
In spring of 2015, the municipalities of Oak Bay, Saanich and Victoria provided the Eastside Select Committee with a long list of technically feasible wastewater treatment sites. These sites were introduced to the public for feedback through numerous public consultation events, several surveys and ongoing dialogue with the public. Based on public priorities and emerging technical, social, economic and environmental considerations, the number of potential sites were reduced.
Below you will find all of the information related to the Eastside siting consultation process (Phase 1).
Eastside Public Briefing and Dialogue
The Eastside public consultation Initiative began on April 29, 2015 with the Opening Eastside Public Briefing and Dialogue. Roughly 150 people attended this meeting and told us what they thought a successful wastewater treatment plant would look like.
Three smaller versions of this briefing took place around the eastside communities (Oak Bay, Saanich and Victoria) in order to get as many people to take part in this process as possible. At these briefings participants received information about what wastewater treatment is, why it is important, and what they could do to help us find the best solution.
Workshops
In order to review the locations the Eastside Select Committee hosted two siting workshops which provided an opportunity for community members to work with engineers, planners and community organizations to look at siting considerations and outcomes for wastewater treatment on the eastside. Approximately 200 people attended the workshops. Information generated through these events will allow for the sites to be filtered using public priorities and emerging technical, social, economic and environmental considerations to help narrow down the number of sites. A report out on what we heard will be posted here once it has been completed.
Site Information
As part of a public engagement process, the municipalities of Oak Bay, Saanich and Victoria provided the Eastside Wastewater and Resource Recovery Select Committee (Eastside Select Committee) with a long list of technically feasible wastewater treatment sites. The details about each of the sites will provide the public with an initial overview of information in order to promote further public dialogue.
Survey
The Eastside Select Committee has concluded the open survey as part of its public engagement process with residents of Victoria, Saanich, and Oak Bay. The main objective is to better understand public priorities for a sewage treatment facility as well as obtain feedback on the public consultation process.
In addition to the open survey, the Eastside Select Committee also completed a statistically relevant representative poll with Ipsos Reid. The respondents were all panelists in Ipsos Reid’s 200,000+ national household panel. A total of 452 local residents completed the survey and the data was weighted to reflect the population based on Census data for region, age and gender. According to Ipsos Reid, this representative survey is accurate to within +/-5.3 percentage points compared to the results that would have been received if all adults in Victoria, Saanich and Oak Bay had been polled.
Eastside Site Ranking
On June 10, a public event was held to report out on the information gathered to date from the public and how that information is being used. This event was also an opportunity to publicly explore some of the architectural and urban design possibilities for wastewater treatment plants. An estimated 80 people attended this event.
At the May 30 and 31 siting workshops, information was shared about each technically feasible site and citizens were asked to weigh in on how sites fared on things like livability, use of existing infrastructure or environmental concerns.
Data from this input was gathered and coded and used to rank the sites as green for a high level of support with mild dissent, yellow for a mixed level of support with greater dissent or red for a high level of concern with little to no support.
The second part of the event was a presentation by award-winning architect and urban thinker Bruce Haden. This presentation challenged the audience to think creatively about what a wastewater treatment facility might provide to the community beyond wastewater treatment and to consider what potential problems a new facility might help to solve. This presentation provided case studies for the architectural and design possibilities for wastewater infrastructure here and around the world.
Eastside Option Sets
Using only the "publicly acceptable" and "possibly acceptable site with conditions" sites, Option Sets were developed based on a functional approach to the treatment of liquids and residual solids. The Option Set considerations include site size, treatment of liquids and residuals, treatment level, resource recovery opportunities (including future growth areas), cost components and engineering standards. Based on public feedback, both centralized and distributed models were developed.