news flash: sewage can be treated

I phoned Steve last night to tell him about all the cookies I made, and said "oh kenz....." in a tone of voice that wasn't sure if I was going off the deep end so he should be careful, or if I should be in trouble for making that many cookies. He perked up a little knowing there were peanut butter cookies though.

Today was our annual 1/2 day inservice at work, where everyone from the whole Community Development business unit gets together for a catered lunch and some presentations about what's going on with all of the departments. It's a strange business unit because it covers Development (which is me, plus the engineering technicians and building inspectors), Planning (from community and social planning, to regional planning, and this big HRM by Design urban design project), plus other departments like Cultural Affairs, and Immigration, and everything to do with sports and community facilities.

But I did learn this: Halifax is on its way to primary sewage treatment. We're not quite there yet, but we're getting there. As of 2004, over 50% of the sewage in HRM went into the harbour with zero treatment. As it was put in the presentation today, that's worse than many third world cities. Since amalgamation in 1996, Halifax Regional Municipality has filled the entire harbour with raw sewage - and the harbour is very, very big. What's happening now - and is already turned on in Halifax, about 6 months away for Dartmouth, and about a year away for the western part - is primary treatment of the sewage, so clean water will be discharged into the harbour, and the sludge will be 'dewatered', then trucked to some place near the airport where it'll be mixed with kiln ash and lime (I think) to make a 'biosolid' which they figure can be sold as dirt or fertilizer. (They hope they can sell this stuff, but I would just be hoping that it was safe enough and you had enough space to put it all. They also made the point that Nova Scotia is a big rock, with very little soil, so....)

But seriously, this is big news? This is the 21st century - sewage treatment shouldn't be big news; it should be old news.

On a feel-good note, I got my watch fixed today by a great guy in a watch repair shop for $10 in about 5 minutes. What a deal! What's silly about that is that the watch has been dead since the spring, and instead of getting it fixed, I've just been wearing my ugly digital travel watch around, which makes me mad whenever I see it because it offends my fashion sense. So I should have got it fixed much earlier! But better late than never, and I am so happy to have my good watch on again! ;-)