RITE Planners Update - Monday April 6, 2015
Main Author and Contact:
Bryan Gilbert
Introduction
The “R.I.T.E. plan” is more of a concept then a "plan" but it stands for Respectful discussion and process leading to an Innovative and Taxpayer friendly sewage treatment that is Environmentally beneficial.
Anyone who is concerned about the sewage treatment project will find it hard to keep track of everything that is happening. The situation is “fluid”. To help deal with the overwhelming amount of information and shifting situations we offer this weekly newsletter; to be shared with interested citizens, councils, CRD directors and the media. To learn more about who we are and what we stand for see “About RITE Planners” below. Just a few of the RITE planners helped this week and we’re a loose group. So, the information and opinions below are not endorsed by everyone who appreciates the “RITE Plan”.
Upcoming Events
April 7, 10:30am: Westshore Select
Songhees Centre
https://crd.bc.ca/…/westside-wastewater-and-resour…/20150407 (9 pages long)
April 8, 9:00am: CALWMC
CRD Boardroom
April 8, 1:30pm: CRD Board Meeting
CRD Boardroom
https://www.crd.bc.ca/docs/default-source/crd-document-library/committeedocuments/capitalregionaldistrictboard/20150408/agenda-with-reports-april-8-2015-crd-board.pdf?sfvrsn=6 (463 pages long! Wow. No one is going to read 463 pages. Good thing we’re having a long weekend! As mentioned before. This board meeting follows too closely the meeting which determines how a two billion dollar project is manage.)
Eastside Public Events
May 11-13 two day workshop
May 28 Options workshop
June Report back to public
Westside Public Events
Innovation Days where technology proponents present their solutions in three half-day workshops April 28,29,30; at Royal Roads.
Three roundtable events in May. Participants of this self-identified during the survey.
Key Agenda Items - CALWMC April 8th
Seaterra retained for the duration - slipped into report
It has the feeling of being a sly trick. There is a recommendation to bring in outside independent consultants on this week’s agenda. Good. Great even. But, in the report is a paragraph that essentially says “Let’s continue to employ Seaterra so they can do the implementation”.
5.1. 15-325 Independent Oversight of Options Development Beyond June 2015
Recommendation: That the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee direct staff to … [get technical oversight during the research phase] ...
The Seaterra Commission, Seaterra staff and consultants will remain in place to undertake the procurement process when the project moves into the Implementation phase. The Seaterra Commission requires its engineering and consultant support in order to meet the timelines committed to in the work plan and conditions of the funding agreements.
When the CALWMC votes to accept this report and approve the staff to take the actions in the report they are telling staff to continue to retain Seaterra. How could they even consider this?
The Commission and project director, Albert Sweetnam, are viewed as the “get er done folks”. Their job was to get the Seaterra project built. But, the sewage plan is morphing into an exploration of a better plan and these folks remained stuck on implementing McLoughlin. They are actually impeding, sometimes intentionally, rather than facilitating, the plan improvement process. Just witness the last two CAWLMC meetings and especially the Feb 18th meeting. See the trust section below.
Currently there’s a profound lack of clarity over where “procurement” and/or “the implementation phase” begins and ends. For example, the Westside issues a request for technical information (RTFI) and found out afterwards that this is deemed to be part of the procurement process so none of the information could be made public, as promised.
Given the Seaterra Commission, Seaterra staff and consultants demonstrated inability to allow for ongoing improvements to a plan (i.e. they see all changes as threats rather than potential opportunities) are they the best choice?
Given the Seaterra Commission, Seaterra staff and consultants demonstrated inability to provide factual information (see trust section below) are they the best choice?
We need to insist on excellence whenever project management is concerned.
The CRD director’s need to strike this section of the staff report before accepting the rest.
Bid extension comes and goes and what happened?
This item is something NOT on the agenda, the extension of the bid. In the previous month’s Seaterra report (Seaterra Program, Progress Report No. 22, February 28, 2015) they say
1.1.5 The selected preferred proponent for the McLoughlin Design-Build-Finance
(DBF), Harbour Resource Partners has conditionally extended the validity
of their bid to March 31, 2015.
OK. It is now April. What happened? Did the CRD authorize another extension without board approval? Who is authorizing these? I’ve been told that every time we re-extend this bid the more we are committing ourselves to the company and the larger the potential lawsuit will be when this bid is finally terminated. Is there really any doubt that the original Seaterra plan is kaput? Someone is digging the money pit deeper and deeper and it has to stop.
This may be fiscally reckless.
This is a continuation of the poor quality of advice coming from Seaterra.
There is Another Notice of Motion at the End of the Meeting
At the end of the agenda Director Hamilton puts forward a good motion and it should be at the top of the agenda. We’ve seen this before. Good motions like this are pushed to the end of the agenda and time often runs out.
This motion calls for independent assessment of locations as well as a open and transparent process. It also allows municipalities to deliver sewage treatment in the case the CRD doesn’t.
5.6. 15-311 Motion for Which Notice Has Been Given: Options for Wastewater
Treatment (Director Hamilton)
WHEREAS: It is critical that there be positive action taken to meet funding deadlines and regulatory requirements for waste water treatment for the Capital Regional District;
BE IT RESOLVED that: Capital Regional District (CRD) staff be directed to support municipalities and First Nations who want to explore options for waste water treatment that are economically responsible, technically feasible, environmentally sound and meet current provincial and federal deadlines;
AND THAT funding be provided from the sewage treatment budget to support an independent assessment of alternative locations to McLoughlin and Hartland, with full and regular engagement of staff and elected representatives from participating municipalities, First Nations and the public;
AND THAT any decisions taken to amend the Liquid Waste Management Plan be done in an open and transparent public process;
AND THAT any further money spent be recoverable under the funding arrangement with the Provincial and Federal Governments and that clarity be sought that the funding arrangement with Provincial and Federal governments be able to support the communities to the extent it supported the CRD driven process.
Independent Oversight Options
The staff is recommending the following roles
1. Fairness and Transparency Advisor (FTA). Reporting directly to the CALWMC, an FTA
will ensure the process of costing the options, working with the host jurisdiction(s) and
preparing a LWMP amendment is fair, transparent, impartial and objective.
2. Technical Oversight Panel (TOP). Reporting directly to the CALWMC, a TOP of up to
three individuals, with a range of expertise, will provide technical oversight to the
engineering and financial work necessary to prepare detailed options for decision making.
3. Technical support to conduct the detailed analysis and engineering work. Contracted
financial, technical and engineering support, separate from resources retained to date, for
the Option Development phase of the project.
Some initial comments:
- The Fairness advisor needs to report to the public, to be independent and trusted.
- The Technical support in item 3 is normal. Yet, we ask if they’ll use the same people that lead to the current $60 million waste.
- The Technical Oversight Panel with a range of expertise. Question, will any one of those “experts” be “expert” in Dockside Green installations? Will any one of them be experts in gasification? The RITE Planners can recommend people who can fill that role. We suspect the CRD will stack this group with “experts” familiar with the technologies used in the failed plan. See “How to save a billion dollars” below.
- We need experts in researching and evaluating technical material who can work with other experts who are specialists in their field; and the public.
- The “public” includes many fine individuals who can contribute to the technical discussion. The Technical Oversight Panel must include a two way dialog with the “public”.
Technical Responses - Waste of Time and Money
The agenda package is huge. We’ve extracted just the summary with technical responses and posted it to our FB page. We’ll comment on this later.
Our thoughts?
- Very obvious missing details on the residual management side. This is where we deal with the concentrated toxins.
- Missing are the many examples that exist in the world, most notably anything from Europe
- We know that at least two vendors did not submit, so that begs the question “How many others felt the same way?”
Key Agenda Items - Westshore Select April 7th
The main items are the public consultation events, mentioned above. RITE Planners are pleased with these and support them yet we have these concerns.
- The original RFTI was focused on wastewater treatment and did not encourage technical submissions around the residual (solids) management.
- The information that came back must be kept confidential which breaks the goal of transparency.
- The material presented to the public had a strong bias towards making the toxic sludge appear to be a good product, when the opposite is true. After all the CRD has twice debated this and agreed it is not suitable to be put on land. Yet the presentation boards and slides continued to suggest this was a possibility.
- One vender pulled their submission from consideration after there was a breach in RFP protocols.
Key Agenda Items - CRD Board April 8th
The CRD board meets immediately after the CALWMC meeting. This means there is no time for serious consultation and reflection before the board ratifies any decisions made. In the past, this has been used to push stuff through too quickly.
The board will review all the technical information submissions viewable at this link (if you have CRD authorization)
Absent are the vendors we heard that don’t trust the CRD and did not submit anything. This “market survey” is therefore ineffective and inconclusive.
RITE Planners Comments
How to save a billion
The Seaterra plan has operating costs which add up to over 1.1 billion over the life of the project. It also needs over $300 million capital to build the “resource recovery centre” to treat the sewage residuals. This capital cost needs to be financed and that adds interest expenses. The revenue from this was small and has possibly been reduced substantially since the initial project plan was made. There are options to this ‘resource recovery center’ which cost less and are more effective. They need to be properly and independently evaluated and this has not been done.
Experts in the field say that advanced gasification could cost a little less than $100 M and make money. This saves $200 M in capital costs; saves interest costs; saves 1.1 billion in operating cost; and possibly makes money.
Trust not restored
Why is there distrust the CRD over this issue? The list is long. Here are a small selection of observations to demonstrate why.
Most recently, in a report presented to the CALWMC Directors on Feb 18th, Albert Sweetnam, the head of Seaterra, made several very inaccurate statements which caused the Directors to refuse to accept the report, something that’s never happened before at this committee. These inaccuracies include: a claim that Dockside Green has failed when it has never failed; a claim that it doesn’t have an outfall when it discharges reclaimed water treated to tertiary standards directly into the inner harbour; a claim that it takes years to get ministry approval for these types of facilities when it only took several months. But the most expensive mistake was made by the entire engineering team. Here is how.
The report that was rejected also stated it would cost $300 million for the CRD to use gasification to handle the residuals from sewage. I and others in the public were able to speak to the Directors at this meeting. We told of another information report that was received by the CRD just a couple of years previous. That other report stated that for $300 million it is feasible, through gasification, to convert into ENERGY, sewage sludge and all solid waste; not just for the core area but for the whole CRD plus the whole Cowichan Valley Regional District and the whole Nanaimo regional district. Let me make this clear. We have the report by the staff who want us to use their recommended technology telling us that it would cost $300 million to use an alternative technology just for the core area and just for sewage sludge. Yet another report with much more research behind it said we can handle 200,000 tonnes of waste (including sewage) for the same about the price using that alternative technology. And we might make money!
CRD / Seaterra / Stantec says about $300M to gasify sewage sludge vs tri-regional study says about $300 M to gasify all waste from three regional districts.
Furthermore, in the news, there are many examples of other regions using gasification for waste. Here is just one. Recently, Hamilton Ontario awarded a contract to gasify 170,000 tonnes / year for just $37 million.
About RITE Planners
The RITE plan is more of a concept then a "plan" but it stands for Respectful discussion and process leading to an Innovative and Taxpayer friendly sewage treatment that is Environmentally beneficial.
We are a very loose group of people comprised of
- waste water engineers and designers with several decades experience
- scientists with several PhDs on related topics
- land use planners
- community leaders
- journalists
- political candidates and sitting elected representatives
- engineers and geoscientists
- environmentally concerned citizens
- experts in various related fields
- plus a lot of regular people
The outcomes we want include;
- We must not take the pollution from the ocean (current situation), concentrate it, and then transfer it to the land or air.
- We must not breed and then distribute antibiotic resistant organisms nor their DNA.
- We seek an outcome that cleans the water to the level that it can be re-used in different ways or discharged into local waterways instead of still polluting the ocean with effluent.
- We seek to have this reclaimed water used to benefit the public.
- We are concerned about water shortages, just up island, and feel it is silly to waste water here, in the CRD, when our neighbours need it so much.
- We recognize that by cleaning the water thoroughly we are now left with all the toxins concentrated in the residual solids, the sludge or what the industry calls biosolids.
- We want to economically extract all valuable compounds possible from the residuals.
- The toxins in the sewage residuals must be completely destroyed and not spread on land. (Did you know that the current plan by the CRD is to ship the residuals up island to be “used beneficially”. These are the words usually used to say “spread on land”.)
- In addition, we want to convert the residuals into energy (energy equals money).
- We seek significant revenue.
- We seek significant cost savings.
We know that you care about our world. Over the next three months there will a lot of discussion about how to get this sewage project built, but this we hope it will be done properly. The failed CRD's plan was going to cost over 2 billion (yes billion) over fifty years. The RITE Planners know that alternatives exist that can do it a fraction of that cost and with real environmental benefit. The RITE Planners want those options to be fairly considered.
Keep in the loop by joining our FaceBook group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/theriteplan/ or send an email to theriteplan@gmail.com and ask to receive our updates. Someday we might even rework the website.
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Staff report rejected by CALWMC
Stantec report stating that advanced gasification is feasible
http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/resmgmt/SRM_Program/Reports/Economic_Assessment_of_Combustion_Technologies_for_SRM.pdf
Tri-regional study MSW study - CRD, CVRD, and RDN
http://cvrd.bc.ca/DocumentCenter/Home/View/8035
Hamilton Ont
http://www.solidwastemag.com/environment/ontario-waste-to-energy-plant-buys-uk-technology-for-36-8-million/1003116340/
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