Stink of slough too much for Bonson neighbours

Simone Ponne/THE NEWS Ken Joyner wants something done about raw sewage in Katzie Slough.

By Phil Melnychuk
Staff Reporter

May 26 2007

It's time to stop raw sewage from running in Katzie Slough, just below Ridge Meadows Arenas, says nearby neighbour Ken Joyner.

"I just don't know how in the day we live in we can have sewage in open ditches like that right next to a subdivision," said Joyner who lives on Joyner Place, named after him following the subdivision of his farm years ago.

"I just don't think it's right. We've had three to four years to do something about it."

He's noticing the stink and the toilet paper more often, most recently on Mother's Day, following a few days of rain.

"In the last couple of months I've noticed it all the time."

It's not right, he says, for ducks to be swimming through human waste.

Joyner has lived in the area for 57 years and used to own a farm that, at one point, raised dairy or beef cattle, poultry and horses. He first raised the issue in 2004, after storm water seepage from heavy rains overloaded the combined storm sewer/sanitary sewer systems.

Greater Vancouver Regional District officials said then that during a heavy rain, storm water can seep into the sanitary sewer system and overwhelm the pumping station, requiring the rainwater/sludge mixture to be dumped directly to a stream or ditch.

Fixing the system is a monumental undertaking and taxpayers couldn’t afford a system designed to handle every type of storm, the GVRD said.

Whether more raw sewage is spewing into the slough now – compared to three years ago, isn't known. Neither the Greater Vancouver Regional District nor Maple Ridge public works department would return calls on the topic.

Joyner, though, said the GVRD told him that in one location in Langley such overflows go into a holding tank. Another option could be for the raw sewage to dump directly into the Fraser River.

He's also called the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, which is interested in the topic.

Sierra Legal is prosecuting the GVRD and the provincial government for alleged pollution resulting from the Iona primary sewage treatment plant in Richmond. Charges were approved by a provincial court judge in March, while a similar prosecution for Lion's Gate treatment plant was approved last fall.

However, the group is waiting for word from the federal government to see if it will take over the cases, which could result in the charges being stayed if they're not deemed in the public interest.

Sierra lawyer Lara Tessaro said the Fisheries Act is "crystal clear" that dumping raw sewage into a stream that leads to fish-bearing waters is illegal.

"I think the GVRD should be very concerned," Tessaro said.

And given that the raw sewage is flowing near a new subdivision, it's also a public health concern, she said.

Sierra previously has launched two previous prosecutions against the GVRD, one for its

Clarke Drive combined storm sewer/sanitary sewer outflow and another for the Annacis Island sewage treatment plant.

Although the charges were stayed, the action resulted in the GVRD speeding up its renovation plans for Annacis with the result that within five years the plant was upgraded to secondary treatment.

Tessaro said there are several such cases in Canada where Environment Canada has charged municipalities for allowing sewage to flow into streams.

And considering that Joyner has been telling the GVRD for years that there's a problem means it needs to "get its act in gear."

According to the Sierra group, secondary sewage treatment removes up to 90 percent of organic waste (biochemical oxygen demanding substances/BOD) and total suspended solids. It also removes more than 90 percent of the toxic, bioaccumulative substances like heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants PCBs, and pesticide residues.

Sierra also says that primary treatment is a mainly mechanical process that removes only between 30 and 40 per cent of biochemical oxygen demanding substances and about half of the total suspended solids. Primary treatment does not adequately treat heavy metals or persistent organic pollutants.

Sierra says on its website that on numerous occasions in 2001 and 2002, Environment Canada inspectors attended the Iona and Lions Gate sewage treatment plants and took samples. Half of the samples taken by Environment Canada at Iona failed the acute lethality test, designed to test for toxicity to fish. All of the Lions Gate samples failed