We won’t have Victoria, BC to kick around any more. At least with regards to dumping their raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Yep, despite a few mutters remaining about lack of scientific evidence warranting a sewage treatment center, it shall be done. I saw a major piece of it on a visit over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house in James Bay, the quaint neighborhood just to the south of the Inner Harbour.
A nearly 1 kilometer pipe bisected James Bay for several weeks as the city was readying for the great pull, when the pipe will be fed underground under the outer harbor seabed from Ogden Point to McLoughlin Point. For those interested in the details, there’s a great Times Colonist article on the topic.
My mother-in-law and others have paid a price. For several weeks the buses stopped running in front of her apartment, so she’s had to walk a distance, traversing a rickety temporary staircase over said pipe, with her wheeled grocery cart in tow. The good news is that the pipe will go to its permanent home this week and the street will be clear! The treatment plant isn’t scheduled to be operational until 2020, but the project is moving along.
A local artist took the opportunity to provide a little art that will likely be buried forever.
Kudos to Victoria for getting this done. It’s the right thing to do. And it’s a great way to get out from under a whole lot of jokes.
Click image to enlarge.
UPDATE
The job was completed Friday, and an unknown sailish reader contributed these photographs. That’s the end of the pipe in the launch pit, an amazing bit of engineering to get that pipe from Ogden Point to McLoughlin Point.
Kurt grew up racing and cruising in the Midwest, and has raced Lasers since the late 1970s. Currently he is a broker at Swiftsure Yachts. He has been Assistant Editor at Sailing Magazine and a short stint as Editor of Northwest Yachting. Through Meadow Point Publishing he handles various marketing duties for smaller local companies. He currently is partners on a C&C 36 which he cruises throughout the Northwest. He’s married to the amazing Abby and is father to Ian and Gabe.