According to recent orders by the provincial government, Victoria has to start treating its sewage. But how?

The orders, reported here last month, require the British Columbia capital to have a plan for at least some treatment of its outflow by June 2007. But according to this concise report Monday in The Tyee, there is no agreement on what to do by that deadline:

The politicians are swimming hard to pop up on the right side of the tide now, but they are largely still coming to terms with having to move forward at all.

Local business and tourism groups want strict standards for secondary treatment, mimicing what’s long been done a few miles south in Washington. Proposals range from simple processing plants to expensive measures that would reclaim usable water and generate power.

It will be fascinating to see if B.C. chooses the bare minimum or technology that sets a new standard.