Quote:
Originally Posted by trofirhen
All of this shjould be a wake up call to the promoters who trumpet Vancouver as "The Greenest City on Earth." Serious attention has to be paid to this, particularly with the city growing as fast as it is.
Some cities, like Stockholm, have, apparently, remarkably pristine urban waters. The Thames in London was once an open sewer, and is now, apparently swimmable.
There are systems (expensive and elaborate, to be sure) that can take the effluent, with all the scheiss, and filter it to the point where it is drinkable again. Such is the case in much of SE England.
Anyway, if nothing else ... Please ... Cut out this laughable "Greenest City in The World" stuff.  |
In this case England is entirely the wrong place to cite as doing things better. They have exactly the same problem of combined storm sewers, and
a massive and expensive problem to clean up.
The only reason the sewage ended up in False Creek was that it overflowed from a broken sewer pipe, and ended up in the storm drain.
The 'Greenest City' branding was a City of Vancouver 10 year plan, from several mayor's ago, (in 2009) and was about climate change, more than anything else. The final Greenest City Action Plan report was in 2021, and the past two Councils haven't use the label. There are plans to clean up False Creek, which is a long, and expensive program.
In this case however, it was a 25 year old pipe that is part of Metro Vancouver's sewer infrastructure that has failed, which was obviously not anticipated. No doubt there will be a careful inspection of the rest of the pipes to make sure this is unlikely to happen again in this location.
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