Musings
A bi-weekly column for The Richmond Review newspaper. It appears every second Saturday.
For the Sake of Our Fish
Maybe it was a sign that I had yet to outgrow the childhood toilet humour over poops and farts.
This column appeared in The Richmond Review March 18, 2006.
I'm not sure what possessed me to take a tour of Richmond's sewage treatment plant at the south end of Gilbert Road last Wednesday. Maybe it was a sign that I still hadn't matured and had yet to outgrow the childhood toilet humour over poops and farts. Or maybe it was the ad in this very newspaper inviting the public to an open house and plant tour. It's an amazing place ! it called out like a rides attendant at an open-air fair. Step right up folks, step right up for a spectacular surprise!
Wastewater? Amazing? I had to find out.
Cookies, desserts, pop, bottled water and coffee welcomed visitors in the administration building after a couple of friendly parking attendants waved us in to a spot on the grass. I wasn't the only one intrigued. 120 people RSVPed for the tour and then they had to start turning them away. Many were families with children in tow.
Outside we are led in ten-minute intervals in groups of 12 to the various tanks, filters and digesters. You'd think it would smell bad, but it doesn't and strangely I'm reminded of an Ontario ice winery I once visited - it too with its large tanks, pipes and use of bacteria.
Further ahead, three exposed round pools called secondary clarifiers separate the remaining solids from the treated wastewater after the grit and heavier solids have already been screened out. The water looks almost pretty with its slow swirls and I have an urge to throw in a dime and make a wish.
While the remaining sludge is heated, reduced and de-watered for use as fertilizer and topsoil mix, the treated water wends its way into the Fraser River with 95% of the solids removed. The more removed, the better since solids in wastewater use oxygen to break down - robbing it from the marine and aqua life in the Fraser.
Engineer and tour guide Gary Soo tells us the plant will be expanding, the fourth of six possible given the size of our underground pipes. At a cost of $25 million, the expansion will meet the anticipated population growth over the next ten to 15 years. Treatment capacity will increase from our current population of over 170,000 residents and businesses to 200,000.
I also find out that our catch basins - where all the rainwater falls into - aren't part of our wastewater system like it is Vancouver. So be careful what you dump into those storm drains; they go straight into the Fraser River.
Also, at the risk of sounding like a poop, try not to use your garburator, and compost instead. It puts extra strain on the wastewater plant. In fact, for every 10 per cent reduction in solids going into our sewers - which includes everything stuffed down the garburator - there is a two or three year delay before we need to spend millions more expanding facilities and robbing yet more oxygen from the aquatic and marine life in the Fraser.
I now realize why I felt compelled to attend the plant tour. There is an expression that succinctly sums up what journalists do:
Crap (feel free to put in the original word here when your kids aren't listening) happens. We write about it.
Now, for the sake of our fish, I literally have.
For tips on reducing the chemicals that enter our waterways, download a Better Solutions brochure at the GVRD website.