What about those Infrastructure Dollars?

A story in the Globe & Mail caught my attention the other day. It seems that Halifax harbour is starting to stink. Residents were hoping that hurricane Bill will give the water such a good churn that most of the gunk will be washed out to sea. It is no wonder really. With part of the system down for repair, Halifax dumps 82 million litres of untreated sewage into the harbour daily. Just in case you wondered, that works out to 2400 semi-trailer tank trucks a day full of sewage. It is no wonder that locals are finding finless browns and beach whistles (tampon applicators) floating near the beaches and are more than a bit put off by the smell.

Halifax isn't alone of course. Although they tell us changes are in the works the city of Victoria B.C. does pretty much the same with their 160 million litres. Things got so bad that where the A&W has the root bear, Victoria has Mr. Floaty. He even tried to run for mayor in 2005 in his attempts to get things cleaned up.

It isn't just on the ocean, sometime they can't figure out what to do with the stuff inland either. While communities have cut back on dumping untreated sewage into rivers from time to time plant failures show up colossal stupidity. A few years ago scores of people in North Battleford Saskatchewan were infected with a parasite when the treatment plant went down for a while. The drinking water intake for the city had been built down stream from the sewage treatment plant. Go figure.

It will be a while before any Canadian forgets Walkerton.

It is all pretty disgusting. When are we going to figure out that we can't just continue to dump this stuff into rivers or the ocean. It is quite amazing that with all the science and technology around us, we continue to act like some third world power when it comes to our effluent.

Hey, what about Little Stevie's infrastructure dollars. Sewage treatment plants are not as flashy as new stadiums and interchanges but we do need them.