Quote:
Originally Posted by craneSpotter
Well, to be fair, Calgary HAS to treat their wastewater to higher standards than most other cities.
Why? Because the Bow is a relatively small river (volume) and has a limited ability to assimilate wastewater plant effluent without seriously reducing downstream water quality. So the city had to set very high treament standards to meet environmental requirements (for concentrations). But kudos! They did a good job of what they had to do.
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While there is some truth to your statement - Alberta DOES have the strictest environmental laws in Canada regarding treatment and release of waste water - I suggest you re-read Kyle's
post as he summed it up nicely.
Cities have fixed budgets. As such, a city that has access to a large body of water but little access to land will focus on reducing its solid wastes first. Correspondingly, a city with access to large areas of land to dispose of solid waste but no where to hide its liquid wastes will focus on addressing liquid waste first. Calgary is obviously in the latter position.
What I find interesting though is cities like Vancouver and Toronto (for example) focused on reducing and properly handling of their solid waste earlier than Calgary while minimizing their effort to handle their liquid waste. Now that Calgary handles it solid waste as good as those two, when are Vancouver or Toronto going to get their act together and move out of the 1900's regarding the proper handling of their sewage???
Vancouver is planning to have full secondary treatment of all human waste water by 2030. Something Calgary had in 1985. Toronto has no plans to have full secondary treatment of all waste water.
What the hell is the excuse for these two cities to continue to use Mother Nature as their toilet?????
The real sad thing is that Toronto and Vancouver are significanly better in handling their waste than many other cities in Canada. It really is a shame what most cities pump into their environment!