Ode to the Mayor of the Rising Sewage
A Retirement Tribute from the Gorge
O Mayor Desjardins,
long seated upon Esquimalt’s municipal throne,
long enough to watch the pipes grow old,
the buildings grow tall,
and the sewage rise faithfully
with every winter rain.
When you became Mayor,
Veins of Life shared an office with Esquimalt.
Not for long.
We were shown the door
without ceremony, Orange Turdet,
or even a small commemorative shovel.
Perhaps we asked too many questions.
Questions about sewage.
Questions about storm drains.
Questions about the Gorge.
Awkward questions, really—
the sort that interfere
with cutting ribbons.
The underground system was already groaning,
built for the smaller Esquimalt of yesterday,
while council approved the larger Esquimalt
of tomorrow.
More buildings.
More toilets.
More pavement.
More runoff.
And beneath it all,
the same elderly pipes
held together by clay, groundwater,
hope and municipal optimism.
When the rain came,
water entered the sanitary mains.
When enough water entered,
the system answered in the only language
an overloaded sewer understands:
Up.
Up through the streets.
Up through the manholes.
Out toward the Harbour.
Out toward the Gorge.
Yet development marched onward,
because apparently the best time
to repair the foundation
is after adding several more floors.
The Official Community Plan spoke warmly
of protecting the Harbour and Gorge.
Council admired those words.
They were handsome words.
Excellent words for a shelf.
Meanwhile, public shoreline became
a private convenience.
Public access narrowed.
Vegetation inconvenient to waterfront views
was treated as though leaves themselves
were lowering property values.
Docks spread across the intertidal shore—
pilings, ramps and platforms,
each one perhaps small enough
to be called insignificant,
until together they became
a floating highway of entitlement.
The rich received access to the water.
The fish received shade.
The eelgrass received less light.
The public received another explanation
of why nothing could be done.
Then came Chan Creek—
the old creek beneath the playing fields,
daylighted not merely as decoration
but as part of a living bioremediation system:
ponds, vegetation, flowing water,
a chance for stormwater to slow, settle
and surrender some of its contamination
before reaching the Gorge.
But maintenance is dull.
Ribbon-cutting is photogenic.
So the treatment ponds became sewage ponds,
the creek became a sewage channel,
and the lagoon became the final exhibit
in Esquimalt’s outdoor wastewater museum.
Admission free.
Swimming encouraged.
Please do not ask what is in the sediment.
Recently, the cameras returned
to celebrate planted shorelines
and the marvellous recovery of nature.
The community volunteers planted.
Nature struggled back.
And politicians arrived
just in time to be photographed
beside the finished work.
A municipal tradition as old as sewage:
The public plants the trees.
Council takes the shade.
Then came seventeen million dollars
from McLoughlin Point.
Seventeen million.
Not delivered through some grand public process
where residents gathered, debated
and chose the future together.
No.
The Mayor sat at the CRD table,
the money arrived,
and the priorities were decided.
A rare opportunity
to begin repairing the rotten infrastructure
beneath Esquimalt’s streets.
But underground pipes are invisible.
Buildings have plaques.
Parks have ceremonies.
Pretty things photograph beautifully,
while sewer mains stubbornly refuse
to pose with the Mayor.
I ran for mayor on precisely this issue.
Fix the sewers.
Fix the storm drains.
Stop building upward
while the infrastructure underneath
is collapsing downward.
Apparently that was radical.
The warnings were dismissed.
The money went elsewhere.
The pipes remained underground,
quietly preparing their rebuttal.
Now the Province demands progress
on inflow and infiltration.
Repair the connections.
Separate the systems.
Stop filling sanitary sewers with rainwater.
Comply—or face consequences.
Strange advice.
Almost exactly what the irritating people
from Veins of Life
had been saying for decades.
Now you retire.
Behind you stand the buildings.
Below them lie the pipes.
The sanitary sewer reckoning alone
approaches three hundred million dollars.
The stormwater system waits behind it,
likely just as hungry.
By our conservative estimate,
future generations inherit
more than half a billion dollars
to repair the sanitary and stormwater systems
that should have been renewed
while the building permits were still warm.
But take heart, Mayor.
There will always be another study.
Another consultant.
Another strategy.
Another glossy report explaining
that sewage entering the Gorge
is a highly complex matter
requiring further discussion.
Perhaps the final report
can be printed on waterproof paper.
So farewell, Your Worship.
May KwakwakaŹ¼wakw ,
Chief of the Undersea World,
guardian of the tides and marine life,
look kindly upon your retirement.
For the sand lance cannot speak.
The juvenile Chinook cannot vote.
The herons cannot attend council.
And the resident orcas
have never once submitted
a properly formatted delegation request.
But the tide keeps records.
It remembers every pipe,
every outfall,
every dock,
every lost patch of eelgrass,
every warning filed away,
and every promise postponed
until after the next election.
You leave office with ceremonies above ground
and a collapsing inheritance beneath it.
Way to go, Mayor.
The buildings are pretty.
The photographs are lovely.
And when the winter rain begins—
The sewage will deliver
your final annual address.
John R Roe
- Office 250 383 2086
- The Dead Boats Disposal Society
- The Veins of Life Watershed Society
- "Over 30 years of cleanup and restoration have taught me one truth—if you don’t stop the pollution at its source, you’re just sweeping sand in a windstorm. Source control, source control, source control. Then, and only then, do you restore."
— JR Roe. Amen - oshaku shushaku—mistake upon mistake compounds to become the sum total of one's knowledge.
- “Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets” — i.e., nature (healthy ecosystems) is real wealth, not a trade-off against wealth.
Canada stays strong by standing united—defending democracy, rejecting division, and leading with truth, justice, and integrity. We fight tyranny with resilience, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to a better future.
Public Recreation in Contaminated Waters: A Practical Question from Heavy Industry Experience
I have spent much of my working life in heavy industry. I have worked as a welder, commercial diver, mechanic, supervisor, factory worker, and tradesperson in settings where materials, chemicals, contaminated surfaces, waste streams, and exposure pathways were treated seriously.
In those workplaces, we were trained to read and understand MSDS/SDS sheets. Before handling materials or working in a potentially contaminated environment, we were expected to understand what we were dealing with, what the exposure risks were, what protective equipment was required, how materials could move through air, water, soil, or sediment, and how cleanup and disposal had to be handled. If we worked on land or in the water, the same basic principle applied: identify the hazard, control the exposure, protect the worker, and prevent the contamination from spreading.
That is why I am struggling with how public use of contaminated rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, and tidal waters is currently treated.
In public recreation, the discussion often seems to stop at fecal-indicator testing. Agencies talk about E. coli, enterococci, fecal coliform, beach advisories, and whether bacterial numbers are above or below guideline values. That information matters, but it is not the whole picture.
Fecal indicators are warning lights. They do not identify everything in the water or sediment. They do not tell the public whether there are viruses, pharmaceuticals, endocrine-disrupting compounds, metals, PAHs, PCBs, dioxins/furans, hydrocarbons, contaminated sediments, stormwater contaminants, or legacy industrial pollutants. They also do not answer what happens when sediment is disturbed by construction, cable placement, dredging, prop wash, anchoring, or public activity.
In heavy industry, a known contaminated area would not be treated as safe simply because one narrow indicator passed on one day. A proper hazard review would ask what contaminants are present, how they can be disturbed, how people may be exposed, what protective measures are required, and whether the area should remain open during or after disturbance.
The public system often appears to apply a much narrower standard. A waterbody with historical industrial use, stormwater outfalls, known sediment contamination, sewer cross-connection risk, and active construction may still be treated as suitable for public recreation unless fecal-indicator testing triggers an advisory. That creates a serious gap between industrial exposure-control practice and public recreational-water management.
The concern is not that every beach requires full chemical testing at all times. The concern is that in known contaminated urban waterways, fecal testing should not be treated as a complete public-health assessment. Where there are contaminated sediments, outfalls, legacy industrial activity, and disturbance, a broader human-health and environmental risk review should be completed before public swimming or other direct-contact recreation is encouraged.
The practical question is simple:
Has the area been assessed for all reasonable recreational exposure pathways, including contaminated sediment, stormwater contaminants, fecal contamination, chemical contaminants, and disturbance-related resuspension, or has the decision been based mainly on fecal-indicator testing?
From my experience, society has not fully connected industrial contamination practice with public recreational exposure. Workers are protected through hazard identification, SDS review, PPE, exposure controls, decontamination, and disposal procedures. The public, including children, swimmers, paddlers, shoreline users, and people entering urban tidal waters, should not receive a weaker standard of care in areas already known to be contaminated.
Fecal-indicator compliance is not the same thing as a contaminated-site recreational exposure assessment.
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