Plans for wastewater treatment are flowing again in Daajing Giids.
On Oct. 7, Daajing Giids council voted unanimously to hire the consulting firm Urban Systems to produce a preliminary plan for the village’s first wastewater treatment system.
“We’re thrilled at the enthusiasm that our new partner in this has approached this project with,” said Robert Madore, chief financial officer for the Village of Daajing Giids.
Mayor Lisa Pineault said it was fantastic to see the work get started.
Expected by December, the $75,000 project plan will be paid from a $1.5-million planning fund co-funded by the federal, provincial, and village governments.
Another $20 million was pledged by the B.C. government towards the actual project construction last year.
In its Oct. 1 proposal, Urban Systems said it will visit Haida Gwaii in the coming weeks. The core team includes two engineers, two planners and a biologist who will be advised by a senior wastewater engineer and others.
Urban Systems noted that plans to introduce sewage treatment in Daajing Giids have been reviewed several times already, but so far the project has been stalled by technical challenges as well as uncertainty about the project site and stakeholder support.
The company said community support will be as important as technical issues to getting the project going.
“This project is expected to be the largest capital project in the history of the community, and will set the path for wastewater management for generations,” the company said.
Daajing Giids is one of the last B.C. communities to pump untreated sewage into the ocean.
The current system draws sewage from roughly half the properties in Daajing Giids, grinds it, then pumps it out of a pipe that runs about 1 km into Bearskin Bay.
In 2010, Environment Canada ordered what was then the Village of Queen Charlotte to start working toward a treatment system and take “significant action” by 2020.
Later that year, the village hired an engineering firm to look at four sites for a sewage treatment plant in the village. In 2013, the village paid for another engineering study that looked at pumping wastewater to an upgraded plant in Skidegate.
In a 2018 referendum, village residents voted 322-21 against purchasing a hillside property above Martynuik Road to build a sewage treatment plant. Residents were concerned that no site-specific engineering had been done for the location, which would have required sewage to be pumped 120 metres uphill.
Ahead of the 2018 referendum, an engineering firm said key issues include finding a large, flat site with a deep-water access for the effluent pipe and an elevation that keeps pumping costs low.