As the Capital Regional District board settles into its new mandate, it will have to deal with the disposal of biosolids, as it is currently out of compliance with provincial regulations.
When the CRD stopped dumping toxic wastes in Juan de Fuca Strait through its new sewage treatment plant at McLoughlin Point, it transferred the disposal of those wastes to the Hartland Landfill.
The CRD’s original plan was to transport the biosolids from the wastewater treatment plant by pipeline to a facility at Hartland, and ship the dried pellets to the Lafarge cement plant in Richmond. This plan has failed because of operational problems at Lafarge.
As a result, biosolids are dumped on a daily basis at Hartland, even though the CRD board banned such land application in 2011. The board had to lift the ban at Hartland to deal with the emergency.
Less than 20 per cent of the biosolids have been shipped to the cement plant over the past 18 months. A small amount of the balance has been legally composted at Hartland in accordance with Ministry of Environment regulations.
But the majority of the 2,800 tonnes are applied as top fill to municipal waste, a practice which is not compliant with ministry regulations.
These biosolids are not benign substances. They contain so called “forever chemicals” that never break down and are potentially carcinogenic. The non-compliance dumping is thus a risk to human health, wildlife and aquatic life through contamination of groundwater.
The landfill is less than a kilometre from the popular Durrance Lake and the headwaters of Heal and Killarney Creeks, both of which feed into Tod Inlet and Saanich Inlet. Most local residents and farmers rely on groundwater, which is not tested for toxic chemicals.
The CRD is actively searching for both short-term and long-term solutions, but time is of the essence to complete these studies and provide remedies in the next few months.
The short-term solutions must be considered by the CRD board as soon as it is up and running. Continued non-compliance with ministry regulations is unacceptable with such high-risk materials.
For the longer term, the CRD has commissioned testing of biosolids at three gasifiers that potentially can destroy these persistent chemicals and capture the embedded carbon as a soil nutrient. This beneficial use is potentially supported by Ministry of Environment policy.
Esquimalt can also be part of the solution. In 2021 it commissioned a feasibility study for a gasifier to treat municipal solid, yard and garden waste. The CRD board agreed to fund a pilot analysis of its biosolids in the same gasifier such that potentially Esquimalt could not only cease dumping its waste at Hartland but also go a long way toward meeting its net-zero carbon targets.
However, the township put this testing on hold during the summer. It is critical that this testing proceed in the new year so that both the CRD and Esquimalt take a serious approach to finding a long-term solution that ends forever the landfilling of toxic biosolids at Hartland and potentially enables municipal solid waste to be diverted from the landfill, and thus extend the life of the current facility at Hartland.
Both the CRD and a number of Greater Victoria municipalities support zero waste, net-zero carbon and elimination of toxic wastes. Bold action by CRD and Esquimalt in 2023 could find a solution to all three goals and create a circular economy that is essential for a sustainable future for the region.
All local governments are crafting their strategic plans following the local elections. Now is the perfect time to include eliminating biosolids and significantly reducing municipal waste dumping at Hartland in these plans.
We call on our newly elected politicians to address this unacceptable situation urgently and not tolerate the risky, stopgap measures that have been employed to date.
