Public health and safety threats are escalating in Metro Vancouver because an aging sewage handling and treatment system will fail more often as a result of climate change, according to a federal report uncovered by The Vancouver Sun.

The report says heavier rainstorms will frequently overwhelm portions of the region's sewage system and accelerate the spill of raw sewage into Burrard Inlet and the Strait of Georgia.

That means more raw sewage will be dumped into the ocean more often, in apparent violation of the Fisheries Act.

View Larger Image

The Main Statistics Building at Stats Canada, which is reportedly under great strain from climate change.

Wayne Cuddington / CNS

Senior regional officials and politicians have in the past been threatened with prosecution under this act, although neither the federal nor the provincial government has to date shown any inclination to enforce it.

More raw sewage spills also mean more health risks to people using the inlet for recreation - swimming, windsurfing, sailing and fishing.

Environmental groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation, were outraged to hear about the contents of the report. They are calling on regional and civic governments to act now to "avoid potential disasters including extreme impacts on human health caused by system failures."

A Metro Vancouver politician promised that the region is already developing plans to address the situation.

But he warned that accelerating the schedule for new sewage treatment facilities would place an additional burden on the region's taxpayers.

The report is one of seven in a national series uncovered by The Sun.

They were produced for Natural Resources Canada by a climate research committee of Engineers Canada, the organization representing 160,000 engineers nationwide.

The reports, which deal with seven Canadian communities, look at a wide range of infrastructure, including roads, bridges, buildings, flood protection  and water treatment facilities that may not function properly as a consequence of extreme weather events emerging as a result of climate change.

The reports represent Canada's most detailed look to date at the physical consequences of climate change on critical public assets.

The federal government has not sought publicity for the reports, which were quietly posted on a Canadian engineering website last month.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government used similar tactics earlier this year, waiting until late on a Friday afternoon last March to post on the web a series of groundbreaking scientific reports on Canada's need to adapt to climate change.

The new reports came to light last week at a conference in Vancouver, where a member of Engineers Canada's public infrastructure vulnerability committee cited "increasing evidence" that past climate records are no guarantee that public infrastructure assets will continue to perform as expected.

The engineer, Brent Burton,  said there is "some evidence emerging that damage may increase exponentially relative to an increase in the severity of an event."

Burton cited a building study in Ottawa that found "a 25 per cent increase in peak wind gusts caused a 600 per cent increase in building damages.

"Past climate is no longer a good indicator of future climate. . . Infrastructure based solely on past climate won't perform as well as it has in the past."

 The Metro Vancouver report identifies several major problems, all a consequence of climate change and heavier rainstorms in particular, and talks about "more days per year with increased contaminant mass loading to the marine environment."

Wastewater overflows and sewage spills posing "environmental contamination or risks to public health and safety" were rated as the biggest concerns - and are identified as significant threats due to the age and size of the system.

Marvin Hunt, chair of Metro's waste management committee, said region officials met last Friday with federal Environment Minister John Baird, who made it clear that the region must proceed with improvements to its sewage system.

But he said the minister did not offer any money from the $66 billion Build Canada infrastructure fund announced earlier this year by the government.

Accelerating plans for fixing the system, Hunt said, would mean more costs for local taxpayers who, so far, haven't been offered any money from senior governments to co-finance upgrades - an estimated $700 million for Iona, and an unspecified amount to residents of Vancouver for fixing the city's sewer system.

"We said to Minister Baird, 'It's really nice for you to make all of these edicts, but who is going to pay for it? We get eight per cent of all the taxes. You get 50 per cent, and yet we have to pay for all of this.'"

John Werring, a marine biologist with the David Suzuki Foundation, accused both the federal and provincial governments of ignoring the urgency of the situation and noted that the European Union imposed just a five-year deadline to force cities to improve sewage handling facilities.

By contrast, Metro has 12 years to upgrade Iona, 22 years to upgrade Lions Gate sewage plant on the North Shore - and Vancouver has at least 42 years to remove its combined storm-sewer pipe system.

Given the risks identified in the engineering report, Werring said, the region should be forced to take action sooner.

"I guess we should be glad that someone has at least taken the steps to consider the potential impacts of climate change on important infrastructure components of major cities, such as sewage collection and treatment systems," he said.

"But what this document speaks to is an appalling lack of attention to system maintenance and upgrade by Metro Vancouver over the last few decades.

"These people were well aware of the weaknesses and the failings of major parts of their system as far back as 1990."

B.C. Environment Minister Barry Penner said the province has to manage a wide array of public interests in determining where and how to spend money.

He noted the government's recent commitment of $50 million to sewage infrastructure in the city of Victoria - which does not even have primary treatment facilities at present.

Infrastructure concerns in the Metro Vancouver report include:

* The Iona Island sewage treatment plant is severely vulnerable to sea level rise - a problem aggravated by the fact that the Fraser River floodplain area where the plant is built is sinking.

The plant sits along the Fraser River foreshore immediately north of Vancouver International Airport. Many of Iona's mechanical systems, including the pumps that move sewage into large processing tanks, are positioned on a basement floor below sea level.

The report identified only low to moderate risks that rising seas would impede sewage pumps that are already operating at the lowest elevation in the region or cause chronic flooding on the site.

However the report says that the risk of flood caused by high tide, wind and rainstorms is severe due to the plant's low elevation and that "little margin may be available" in future to avoid storm-related flooding of the site.

* There is a critical risk that Iona will be unable to properly treat sewage during storm surges combining high tide, higher sea level and wind-driven waves.

Those circumstances will bring about "higher extreme water levels" creating more resistance against the pumps that move sewage through the system - and the sewage outfall pipe carrying primary-treated effluent from Iona is already considered undersized for the work it must do.

* Around the region, some below-ground sewage pumps are at moderate risk of flood-related failure that "could cause local environmental contamination and human health risk."

* The Vancouver civic sewer system combines stormwater and sewage in the same pipes and overflows 30 per cent of the time when it rains  - regardless of season.

Those overflows discharge raw sewage directly into Burrard Inlet, a very popular recreation area for Metro Vancouver residents, and the report warns that the overall volume of rain is expected to increase 18 per cent by 2050.

The B.C. government in 2002  reported that the highest concentrations of fecal coliforms and other pathogens occur in the inlet immediately after it rains.

The report predicts "more frequent and greater volumes" of raw sewage will be spilled directly into the inlet, which is already closed to shellfish harvesting year-round as a result of high fecal coliform levels in tissue.

Metro Vancouver has been ordered by the provincial government to upgrade the Iona plant to secondary treatment by 2020, which will improve the overall quality of effluent flowing from the plant into the Strait of Georgia - although the report warns that rainstorms and storm surges could still pose problems.

In the longer term, risks will be lowered as Vancouver replaces its combined storm-sewage pipe system and puts storm water into dedicated lines.

That will leave Iona to receive  just sewage, with total volumes of material significantly lower than at present.

It will also stop the backups that happen now when Iona is full and cause the raw sewage spills from storm drain outfalls around the city.

"This report from Engineers Canada is obviously very important for getting an initial picture of some of the risks," said Albert Van Roodselar, an environmental manager with Metro.

Former Iona superintendent Jim McQuarrie said the information in the report is valuable because it can help guide the looming redevelopment of the facility.

"That climate knowledge makes a difference on our long-term infrastructure decisions," McQuarrie said.

ssimpson@vancouversun.com

www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html