Floggin' The Floatie

ScienceSchmience
Optics'RUsVille

When commenting on the Victoria 'Raw Sewage' issue a few days ago I had missed Joel Connelly's commentary in the Seatle Post-Intellingencer.

I've long had the utmost respect for Mr. Connelly's opinions on environmental and political issues on both sides of the 49th:

Here he is on Mr. Floatie:

James Skwarok will assume his better-known identity as "Mr. Floatie" in Victoria this afternoon, dressing up in costume as a 6-foot-tall turd, donning a sailor's hat and speaking in a falsetto voice.

The get-up will draw TV cameras like flies to (bleep) as Skwarok delivers a "Frisk Assessment" at the Capital Regional District. The CRD is releasing a scientific and technical report on the discharge of untreated sewage by British Columbia's touristy capital and neighboring cities.

Mr. Floatie has become a national protest symbol in Canada, goading politicians to treat the raw, sometimes toxic effluent that gets flushed into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Victoria is renowned for its elegant gardens, its bicycle paths and the big vote it gives to Green Party candidates.

Each day, however, it uses an international waterway as a toilet for 31 million gallons of raw sewage -- enough effluent to fill 40,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools in a year.

And that's not all. According to the regional district's own monitoring figures, 5 million kilograms of oil and grease per year flow through the Clover and Macaulay Point sewage outfalls.

Port Townsend, Sequim and Port Angeles built sewage-treatment plants years ago. North of the border, an old rule has applied: Hell hath no fury like a bureaucracy defending itself.

Which is all good stuff.

But then Mr. Connelly really goes for the jugular when he quotes the Chamber of Commerce.

"To us it's a business issue," Robin Adair, chairman of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce, said recently.

"I think there is an awful lot of science that is mixed," he added. "It's the optics. If our visitors are not happy with a lot of raw sewage in our strait, and a lot of people in Victoria are not happy about it, then we need to do something about it."

So there you have it.

It's all about 'mixed' science and 'optics'. Of course, this is from the impeccably credentialled Robin Adair who, before he became chair of the Chamber of Commerce, was reknowned for his nobel prize-nominated work as a Campbell Government-friendly flack-hack. And don't forget Mr. Adair's rigorous scientific, MIT/Harvard PhD comparable, scientific training as.........a news reader/legislative reporter at CHEK-TV.

Sheesh.

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Update: Here's Mr. Connelly's column from today in which he dubs the waterway concerned the 'Strait of Juan de Poopa'.
And here is the URL for the advocacy group 'Poop Victoria'.

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