North and Byrne Honoured

Norths in car - Photo by Dan Davidson

These Stories in This Issue

Tom Byrne - Photo by Dan Davidson

Welcome to the September 10, 2004 online edition of the Klondike Sun, reproducing a selection of the articles and photographs from the September 8 newsstand edition.

The Sun has only recently been updated on the web after a hiatus since the January 16/04 issue. Current issues are now available on the site, and the archives from 1997-2003 are linked to this site.

This issue is one of the nicer ones that we’ve assembled in the last six months, since it had a lot of positive stories to tell. Sadly enough, some of our “bad news” issues seem to sell better.

As we move through the back and forth process of getting all of 2004 onto our new website, changes keep taking place in the site. It is September 18, 2004 as I write these introductory notes. Our webmaster, John Steins, has now added a search engine to the site which will allow you to compile a collection of articles on any one subject. In addition, all the issues from 1996 to 2003 can be accessed (though not searched) through our archive link to the old site.

The best way to read the Klondike Sun is still to have the paper in your hands. There is subscription information on the Home page of this website.

Court order on S & W Solutions Gets Four year Extension

Sub headline: Judge Sees Progress and Change Before Allowing Extension

by Dan Davidson

When Judge Heino Lilles ordered the City of Dawson to have a secondary sewage treatment plant operating by September 1, 2004, he was attempting to force a solution to a problem which has been dragging on since 1983, when the town got its first water licence. He was also forcing the

The Dawson City Screening Plant is where the solids are removed from the town’s effluent and the water temperature, which is naturally about 4°C, is raised to 6°C before the liquid that remains is pumped into a holding tank under the dyke before being released into the Yukon River. This liquid is what is referred to as “raw sewage” when this issue is discussed publicly. Photo by Dan Davidson.

town to adhere to the terms of a water licence application that was then about to go before the Yukon Territory Water Board.

In addition, the case was related to an actual violation of the existing water licence, which occurred on August 16, 2000.

Between that time and August 26, 2004, things changed, and those changes are reflected in the judge’s new ruling on the case, handed down on that day and received here in written form on August 31.

Lilles notes early in his ruling that the town did pay the $5,000 fine which was levied during the original ruling on March 5, 2003.

He goes on to make a case for why the town was unable to meet his deadlines, essentially accepting the presentation which was prepared by the City of Dawson, most of which had been assembled prior to the dissolution of the council in April 2004.

Lilles notes that the “updated, hard figures” for the cost of plant construction came in after his ruling and that the price tag for the mandated treatment plant “increased by over 100% from the nine million dollars to almost nineteen million.”

That was not all.

“The annual operating and maintenance costs increased by over 70% to over $400 per resident per year,” Lilles wrote.

Finally, he added that “it became apparent that the City of Dawson was in a financial crisis.”

Taken together, these things made a strong case for the town being realistically unable to meet his original deadline.

But the judge doesn’t simply make excuses for the town in his ruling. he goes on to state that the town “has been actively engaged in exploring alternative technological solutions” to its sewage problems and, as part of that process, had recruited the cooperation of the territorial government, and several of the federal agencies which had been pushing it to remedy the situation as quickly as possible.

Instead of the overly expensive Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) plant which had been the focus of water licences and the court order and, therefore, the town’s planning efforts, the emphasis has shifted to finding a lagoon solution, something that was looked at in the early 1990s, but discarded at that time for technical reasons.

YTG’s Minister of Community Services, the Honourable Glen Hart, had committed an additional $6 million to this new project and was prepared to use that money to leverage the remaining $6 million from the federal infrastructure fund.

The Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in were involved to the extent that some of the proposed locations for a lagoon might be on their land. Again, it had not been possible to have this discussion prior to the conclusion of the first nations land claim agreement.

Finally, the town had put together a amended water licence proposal which will not be before the Water Board for some months to come, but which reflects all of these factors.

Judge Lilles praised the town for the steps it has taken “to comply with the conditions of the existing water licence” and noted that the town has raised the temperature of its discharge water from four to six degrees Celsius as well as limiting “the discharge of septage at the screening plant by third parties.”

This last point is important because the town only fails its licence requirements in the summer, when river flow is low and the discharge rates are higher.

Concluding, the judge states, “I am satisfied that there have been significant changes in the circumstances beyond the control of the City of Dawson since the original order of this court.

“I am also satisfied that the City of Dawson has proceeded with reasonable diligence in addressing these changes in circumstances.”

The new deadline of December 31, 2008 is intended to allow for these circumstances, as well as short construction seasons and the need to test the feasibility of the new proposed solution to the problem. While the town will be require to account for its actions in court every six months, there is also, according to Trustee Ray Hayes, a strong indication that it would not be held to the 2008 deadline if circumstances justified a further extension.

Hayes is very pleased with the outcome of the case and says that he himself can take very little credit for it. In his opinion, the work had been done before he arrived and carried to fruition by capable staff people.

It is worth noting that this is an appeal that the former council did not originally intend to launch. It was launched at the request of the territorial government, which Hayes says picked up all the court and related costs for the appeal.

In the time since the hard costs of the SBR plant became known, Lilles says there has been a greater degree of cooperation between federal environmental regulatory agencies and the City of Dawson. A joint working group has been discussing this issue and possible solutions to such an extent that the request for an amendment to his 2003 ruling came before him “as a joint submission, supported by the City of Dawson and the Attorney General of Canada. It has been discussed and received with approval of the federal department, Environment Canada.

Former Mayor Lauds Lilles Decision

by Dan Davidson

Dawson City has been granted a four year extension on its deadline for having a secondary sewage treatment plant in place, a deadline which passed on September 1. It must now have a system in place by December 31, 2008, and must submit progress reports every six months.

Judge Heino Lilles, the same judge who imposed the court order in the first place, made that decision on Thursday, August 26, just days before his timetable would have imposed the first of a series of $5,000 fines on the town.

Former mayor, Glen Everitt, was among those in the court room the day the ruling was handed down, and he said that he felt his councils’ actions on this matter had been vindicated.

“I was very pleased with Judge Heino Lilles support of the efforts that the City has put forward over the past seven years, in particular the last year and a half.

Everitt said he was very happy for former councillors Byrun Shandler, Wayne Potoroka and Joanne Van Nostrand, who sat on the project management team along with former city manager Scott Coulson and former treasurer Dale Courtice, as well as superintendent of public works Norm Carlson and officials from the territorial government.

“It worked for a lengthy period of time, and the judge recognized it and complimented it.”

Everitt felt this was especially significant since the committee had been under a sustained public and political attack during much of the last two years when most of the work that led to the report which impressed the judge was carried out.

“The document that ended up being produced and tabled to the judge was obviously what they’ve been waiting for. Rather than the city saying it would cost this much money, (the document) showed it. They proved it.

“The judge clearly saw that there was a partnership that has emerged between different government departments and amongst groups that showed that the city was trying to move forward and was doing due diligence.”

Everitt said this was shown in the judge’s decision not to fine the city for not meeting the September deadline.

When the ruling first came down the council of the day, led by Everitt, was clear in saying that it could not meet the judge’s deadline, but that it would work at the project.

At the end of the planning for the sequencing batch reactor (SBR) plant, the one approved by the previous Liberal government and assumed in the court order, it was found that such a facility would cost almost four times the original cost estimates provided by YTG to construct, and that the annual operating costs would, as has been said here for nearly 20 years, be excessive for a town this size. The final costs were in the range of $19 million.

In fact, these costs were not far off the claims made by MLA Peter Jenkins when he was Dawson’s mayor during the 1980s and early 1990s.

The most probable solution at the moment seems to be a lagoon system, most likely situated in West Dawson, since possible Klondike Valley sites were ruled out as a result of the Klondike Valley Land Use Plan, which was developed over 10 years ago. Both Premier Fentie and MLA Jenkins mentioned lagoon potential as one justification for a bridge across the Yukon River during their meetings here early last spring.

Trustee Ray Hayes has indicated that his information is that sewage could be piped under the river to a lagoon or, if the bridge project goes forward, piped over the bridge route. The lack of a bridge was one of the factors that eliminated consideration of West Dawson sites a decade ago. This led, in turn, to the selection of the SBR mechanical plant was the chosen treatment option.

Hayes has said there are up to a dozen possible locations across the river, but that tests need to be done to determine what would be best. In spite of that, the hot rumour in the town is that the lagoon would go where the YTG campground is currently located.

This cheaper option is still being estimated to have a $12 million capital cost which is still more than double the $4.8 million allocated in the contentious Capital Funding Agreement of 2001. About $4.2 million of this has already been spent investigating and planning the system which has now been rejected by the town and the territorial government.

That decision has now received legal blessing from Judge Lilles.

The real economic benefits of a lagoon system are that the annual operating costs are substantially less than the SBR plant, in line with the town’s current rates, which run to $1700 annually for a residential rate payer.