How beluga whales, orca births are linked

By Letter to the Editor on December 31, 2018.

Montreal diverted its sewage to the St. Lawrence River; shortly thereafter beluga whales started dying. The deaths were blamed on tanker traffic. No deaths were reported before or after restoration of the sewage treatment.

Victoria is just now in the process of building a Sewage Treatment Facility to serve only the Greater Victoria area, rather than pushing the stuff into the ocean. Until completed and in operation, the region will continue to discharge an average of 82 million litres a day into the ocean.

The orca pods in southern B.C. waters haven’t a surviving birth in five years.

Sewage does not only contain human waste it has in it everything dumped into our toilets. Medications and everything flushed out of bodies, chemicals, spoiled products thru our garburator’s. Making it a deadly source of contamination.

Most of Vancouver’s sewage goes to treatment plants. The older parts of the sewage and stormwater system use one pipe that carries both sewage and stormwater combined. Raw sewage frequently backs up into the stormwater system dumping 36 billion litres of untreated effluent from outfalls in Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster each year. Stormwater overloads the system and discharges from 42 combined underwater outfalls, so people never see the raw sewage that harms marine life all around the outfalls. The worst outfall empties into Burrard Inlet at the north end of Clark Drive. Huge volumes of raw sewage discharge regularly from this site. A large area of the ocean floor is smothered by human feces, and other excrement. The plume reaches New Brighton Park. Outfalls are at Brockton Point, Coal Harbour, English Bay, Kitsilano and five in False Creek. More than a dozen go directly into the Fraser River, where juvenile salmon spend months acclimatizing to saltwater environment.

Greater Vancouver Regional District has set a 50-year timeline for eliminating these raw sewage discharges. Fisheries and Oceans Canada considers them a violation of the Fisheries Act.

Eugene Adamson

Medicine Hat

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