PUBLIC SAYS "NO P3 SEWAGE TREATMENT"

Victoria, British Columbia
On February 25th & March 10th, 2010 over 40 citizens made
presentations to the Core Area Liquid Waste Management Committee - all
in favour of PUBLIC sewage treatment. At five minutes each, these four
presentations from Feb 25th will give you a quick overview of what's at
stake:

First, from February 25th,
Here’s Greg Baynton, President of the Vancouver Island Construction
Association.

“The CRD is considering how to procure…the largest capital project in
Vancouver Island’s history. If the domestic and local construction
community is excluded from the opportunity to participate…it will have a
long-term detrimental impact on the industry and the people who have
traditionally worked in it and lived on Vancouver Island.”

Listen
to Greg Baynton

Next, Jenny Farkas, an independent businesswoman who recently
created her own website
www.smellsfishy.ca outlining some of
the myths surrounding P3s.

“P3s are like a really well-executed magic trick. The P3 model puts up
a smoke screen that hides the fact that risk – and especially
environmental risk – is not actually transferred to the private sector,
and the magic trick also uses sleight-of-hand accounting to disguise the
true cost to the public ledger.”

Listen
to Jenny Farkas.

AND FROM March 10th, here are Kim Manton and Craig Ashborne:

Kim Manton – on how choosing “public” sewage treatment will enhance
people’s faith in their elected representatives:

“Many people don’t even know what the CRD is, let alone what
procurement means, but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that
once they understand what privatization means to their community, the
citizens of the CRD overwhelmingly want the system to be public.”

“This is your opportunity to show people…that their voices and their
actions matter. Alice Walker said that ‘the most common way people give
up their power is thinking that they don’t have any.’ You have an
opportunity to reconnect citizens to their power and to let them know
they have been heard.”

Listen
to Kim Manton

Craig Ashbourne, on the fallacy of “risk transfer” in P3 contracts:

"In the late 1990s there was a spill in the harbour in Hamilton…180
million liters of raw sewage was spilled into that harbor, and the
corporation that was running it (the sewage treatment plant)
surprisingly went bankrupt…and what happened was…the taxpayers of the
city of Hamilton ended up having to foot the bill for the clean up of
that raw sewage spill. The risk, in fact, hadn’t been transferred off
the city; it came back to bite every one of those taxpayers when that
spill happened."

Listen
to Craig Ashbourne

To view videos of all the presentations made on February 25th,
CLICK
HERE

For the latest scoop from Victoria go to the
Greater
Victoria Water Watch Coalition website
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