YVR continues to experience growth in the number of flights departing from or arriving at the airport (Photo by Kim Nursall)

Asat Bidu stood in line at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) one afternoon in late March, waiting to check in to her flight to India. She makes the trip with her husband and son every couple of years, transferring through cities like Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Manila along the way.

Bidu and her family are just three of the millions of passengers who will travel to or from YVR this year. Despite a dip in traffic following the 2008 financial meltdown, Vancouver’s airport continues to experience steady growth, in both the number of flights that it offers and destinations that it serves.

Bidu’s husband, Biju, thinks that flying should be convenient, but that YVR and the aircraft industry need to maintain a balance between growth and environmental sustainability.

“We want to keep it clean,” he said, adding, “but we definitely want airplanes.”

Vancouver Airport Authority (VAA), which manages YVR, actually considers itself a trendsetter when it comes to environmental management. But although it’s identified emissions and air quality as priorities in its 2009-13 Environmental Management Plan, the emissions from airplanes are largely outside of its control. That’s because the design and operation of airplanes, the worst offenders when it comes to carbon emissions, generally fall outside of the influence of airports.

As Kathryn Harrison, a University of British Columbia political science professor who specializes in climate change policy and believes that YVR’s environmental programs are valuable, noted, “The biggest issue with airline travel is that it’s extremely fossil fuel-intensive to get people from one place to another in an airplane.

“And that’s the part we don’t talk about.”

In the meantime, worldwide demand for air travel is expected to triple by 2025, according to a 2008 report by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. In light of the increasing pressure on airports and airlines to expand services, scientists, the aviation community and governments continue to debate what should be done to reduce the aircraft industry’s environmental impact.

Expansion vs. the environment at YVR

YVR’s plans for expansion were given a boost by the British Columbia budget back in February. Finance Minister Kevin Falcon announced a tax exemption for jet fuel used on international flights, which include those originating from or travelling to the United States.

At least 8,000 new international flights are expected to be added to YVR's arrivals and departures over the next five years (Photo by Kim Nursall)

VAA’s director of aviation marketing, John Korenic, said that 22 airlines have agreed to expand their service as a result of the fuel cost savings, in addition to other incentives offered by the airport. Over the next five years, approximately 8,000 new international flights are expected to be added to the list of YVR arrivals and departures on an annual basis.

Korenic said the fuel tax exemption will help YVR “enhance [its] competitive position vs. other gateways,” primarily airports located along the U.S. West Coast and in Alberta.

But 8,000 new flights a year will produce approximately 6,074 tonnes of CO2 in and around Sea Island alone, which will likely mean an increase to the 78 per cent of CO2 emissions in the area already directly associated with airplanes.

Toni Frisby, YVR’s manager of environment, said that nationwide, a number of projects are helping to reduce airplane emissions.

“Modernization of the fleet goes a huge distance in terms of reducing the emissions,” she said, because as a result, aircraft “are so much more efficient.” Additionally, the “load factors” of airplanes have increased, which means airplanes are “flying fuller,” thus producing fewer emissions per passenger.

And at YVR, Frisby and the energy reduction team oversee a wide array of environmental programs that target the impact of the non-aircraft vehicles used to service airplanes as well as the airport building itself.

Projects include a solar-powered water heating system that provides 80 per cent of the water to the domestic and international terminals, and a building and lighting system designed so that daylight is utilized as the primary lighting source as much as possible.

YVR prides itself on its environmental programs, including this indoor garden and aquarium in the international terminal (Photo courtesy of Vancouver Airport Authority)

“We’re always willing to stick our nose out and try stuff,” Frisby said.

Since the energy reduction team was introduced in 1999, the airport has saved 24 gigawatt-hours of power, or enough energy to power 2,400 homes for a year.

“Certainly we’re in the lead, in the front of the pack,” when comparing YVR’s environmental track record to other airports, Frisby said.

Global efforts to curb aviation’s environmental impact

In other areas of the world, it’s not airport authorities that are spearheading the effort to reduce the environmental impact of the airline industry, but governmental organizations.

The European Union has drawn the ire of many countries and airlines with the imposition of a carbon tax that specifically targets airplane emissions as of Jan. 1, 2012. India and China have even banned their airlines from paying the tax.

“I think it’s a bold move by the EU, because those emissions are big, and an argument can be made…that somebody needs to be responsible for those emissions,” said UBC’s Harrison, adding that part of the challenge is that emissions are “difficult to regulate” because they take place between countries and jurisdictions.

“I wouldn’t expect the Canadian government to go after those — they’re not even going after the much bigger sources within Canada.”

Beyond taxing emissions, another way to reduce the environmental impact of airplanes would be the adoption of biofuels.

But as YVR’s Frisby noted, currently no airplanes fly in or out of that airport using alternative fuel. The U.S.-based Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative is hoping to change that.

By 2014-15, approximately 1 per cent of all jet fuel used to fly planes will be made from biofuels (Photo courtesy of Flickr user angeloangelo)

Executive Director Richard Altman said he expects that by 2014-15, approximately 1 per cent of all commercial airplanes will be flown using biofuels, with a very good chance that number will grow to 5 per cent by 2020.

If 5 per cent is achieved, it will mean that commercial aviation can likely “meet the goal of carbon-neutral growth,” Altman said, “which means there will be no more carbon added to the atmosphere.”

Altman said two alternative fuels that are much better than traditional jet fuel in terms of their carbon footprint have been approved in the U.S. and are currently being used to fly on a trial basis. However, barriers to adoption, including low supply and the significantly higher cost of biofuels, continue to hinder growth of the industry.

Back at YVR, Frisby said there are even more technical issues to consider, among them managing which airlines would get to use alternative fuels that may be brought to Sea Island.

The low scientific understanding of the impact of aviation

According to University of Colorado professor Darin Toohey, beyond CO2 emissions, the impact of aviation on the environment is not well understood.

“We have a broad understanding of the kinds of things we can expect from the aircraft, but I wouldn’t say we have a consensus on the specifics at all,” he said.

The specifics include how emissions like water vapour, nitrogen oxides, soot and sulfur oxides affect the atmosphere, especially when they interact with the intensely cold environment planes fly in at high altitudes.

“It’s a very difficult measurement to make at -80 degrees centigrade,” Toohey said. “Pretty much everything related to aircraft (studies) needs work.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Aviation and Climate Change Research Initiative in the U.S. have both produced scientific papers on the impact of aviation. They attempt to summarize what we know about the subject, but they’re mostly guides for future research.

Given this low level of understanding, Toohey said, it’s very difficult to develop effective policies that target aircraft emissions.

Aviation vs. other emitters

Moreover, YVR’s Frisby thinks that the focus on aviation is somewhat misplaced. As she pointed out, the transportation industry is responsible for approximately 23 per cent of Canada’s CO2 emissions — of which just 5 per cent comes from aviation.

The source of most transportation-derived emissions falls under a category Frisby refers to as “the big elephant in that room”: public vehicles. “There are more opportunities to use alternatives for [those vehicles] than there are for aircraft.”

Prof. Harrison, however, doesn’t believe such stats should lessen the effort to reduce aviation’s environmental footprint.

“Every 30 per cent is made up of a whole bunch of 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 per cents,” she said.

“When we talk about the need to reduce our emissions by 50 per cent or 80 per cent or 90 per cent by 2050, no one’s off the hook.”

Protester at the 'No Tanker Rally' held on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery on March 26, 2012

On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground off the coast of Alaska, resulting in the one of the worst ecological disasters in history.

The 23rd anniversary of the spill was marked by the gathering of hundreds of people at the Vancouver Art Gallery who, at the same time, voiced their opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline project, which would carry oil from Northern Alberta to the west coast of British Columbia.

But lost in the shadow of the Enbridge debate are plans for the expansion of a different pipeline that has received comparatively little media attention.

Kinder Morgan (KMI) wants to “twin” — essentially construct a new pipe next to the existing one — its Trans Mountain oil pipeline, which runs from Edmonton, Alta. to Burnaby, B.C. Should the company’s proposal be accepted, the Trans Mountain pipeline’s transport capacity of tar sands crude to the West Coast would double to an estimated 700,000 barrels per day.

The expanded pipeline would subsequently mean roughly double the number of oil tankers would pass through the Port of Vancouver, much to the dismay of environmental groups and First Nations whose traditional territories are located in the region.

Economic incentives

There is strong economic incentive to expand access to Canadian oil on the west coast of B.C., according to Juan Plessis, a pipeline and power analyst at Canaccord Genuity. Currently, a shortage of capacity to transport crude oil out of Alberta is depressing prices for Canadian oil producers and reducing tax revenues for both the province and the country.

Trans Mountain pipeline terminus at Kinder Morgan's Westbridge Terminal

According the Government of Alberta, the oil sands currently produce approximately 1.3 million barrels per day. The inability to ship much of that oil, due to pipeline bottlenecks, is causing Albertan crude prices to trade at discounts of almost $35 per barrel to international oil prices, said Werner Antweiler, professor of empirical economics at the Sauder School of Business.

“Canadian producers are losing in the magnitude of $18 billion dollars a year because they can’t get their oil to market,” said Antweiler.

“Building a new pipeline that will facilitate exports will benefit  [Canadian producers] economically, and there is quite a lot of money on the table. The only solution is to build more pipeline.”

Safety concerns

The Trans Mountain pipeline began operations in 1953 and was sold to Kinder Morgan in 2005. The company notes that it’s “the only pipeline system in North America that transports both crude oil and refined products to the west coast.”

The idea to twin the Trans Mountain pipeline has local environmental groups concerned. “Oil spills are a regular occurrence; the risk goes up the more tankers [you've] got,” said Ben West, a campaigner from the Wilderness Committee, a environmental advocacy group.

“So if you are talking about reducing the likelihood of a spill, the obvious thing to do is not increase the amount of [tanker] traffic,” said West.

Ben West, campaigner from the Wilderness Committee on Tsleil-Waututh land, across from Westbridge Terminal

Since Kinder Morgan purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline in 2005, the company’s facilities in both B.C. and Alta. have had several oil spills, all of them on land. On July 24, 2007, workers digging in Burnaby punctured the pipeline, which, according to a Transportation Safety Board of Canada investigation, released almost 1,500 barrels of oil into the surrounding neighbourhood.

On May 7, 2009, a storage tank at Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Terminal in Burnaby, leaked more than 1,900 barrels of crude. On April 23, 2011, the Trans Mountain pipeline released 70 barrels of oil near Chip Lake, Alta.

Another spill occurred on Jan. 24, 2012, when a storage tank in Abbotsford, B.C., released approximately 70 barrels of crude oil.

Andrew Galarnyk, director of external relations for Kinder Morgan Canada, asserted the company’s positive safety record.

“We place the highest priority on safety and environmental responsibility,” wrote Galarnyk in an emailed statement. “The Trans Mountain pipeline has a safe and efficient track record.”

Assurances from Kinder Morgan about the safety of its operations are no consolation to the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation (TWN). Situated directly across Burrard Inlet from Kinder Morgan’s Westridge Terminal, where the crude oil is loaded onto tankers for export, TWN worries about recent increases in oil tanker traffic.

“I grew up on that inlet and the waters have always been important to me. I have had nightmares of a ship turning over and all that oil coming towards us,” said Tsleil-Waututh Elder Amy George.

Barbara Joy Kinsella, spokeswoman for Port Metro Vancouver (PMV), said, “Vancouver has never had a navigational issue with an oil tanker. All oil tankers [arriving] in Vancouver are doubled hulled and subject to strict international, national and Port Authority standards.”

Kinder Morgan, for its part, is aware of the safety concerns surrounding its plans to twin the Trans Mountain pipeline. “We know that many residents of B.C. have questions about our proposed expansion plans,” said company spokeswoman Lexa Hobenshield.

“We will undertake extensive environmental, socio-economic and other assessments and an open and thorough engagement process with communities along the pipeline route and the marine corridor as well as First Nations, industry, governments, and non-government organizations.”

Economics vs. Safety

An oil tanker at Kinder Morgan's Westridge Terminal in Burnaby, B.C.

Kinder Morgan has yet to submit its application to twin the pipeline to the National Energy Board of Canada, the regulatory body responsible for approving the pipeline proposal. On January 19, it completed tendering an “open season process,” aimed at assessing the interest in the pipeline on the part of other companies. It plans to turn in its formal application within the next 18 to 24 months.

Until then, Kinder Morgan is not obliged to provide any definitive answers to the public, said Carol Leger-Kubeczek of the National Energy Board of Canada.

Still, said Kubeczek, “People want to know [about Kinder Morgan’s plan].” Given the current public discussion about pipelines, “It is the right time to get the information out about KMI’s expansion plans,” she said. “But it is still too early for answers.”

One way or another, the debate over the Trans Mountain pipeline production is expected to be a big one.

“Depending on who you talk to, you get very different opinions,” said Sauder’s Antweiler. “The oil people say all the environmentalists are out to lunch, [that] they don’t understand the issues. They’re worried about tanker traffic. If you talk to the environmentalists, they think we’re going have another Exxon Valdez every other day. Basically, you get both extremes.”

And Antweiler’s take? “I’m sitting somewhere in the middle.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Dr. Antweiler discusses the economic benefits of expanding pipeline capacity to the west coast of B.C.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ben West discusses the dangers of expanding pipeline capacity to the west coast of B.C.

As a photographer, Topham understood that the loss of these archives means the loss of identity. To that end, he started a unique project, Liberia ’77, to give back to the country that had shaped his family memories so profoundly.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Chris Thoreau would rather spend time growing pea shoots than convincing city hall to make the practice legal.

One of the UrbanDigs plots in the Kitsilano neighbourhood of Vancouver in 2011 (Photo by Julia Smith)

Thoreau owns a small agricultural business called My Urban Farm from his home in East Vancouver, where he grows sunflowers, buckwheat, and pea shoots year-round. He also runs Your Local Food Peddlers, a company that connects customers in Vancouver with other urban farmers in the city and the Lower Mainland. He sells to farmers’ markets, restaurants, and a few small grocers.

Business is booming. But in order for Thoreau to get a license and insurance for his food-growing business, he would have to move production out of Vancouver.

Commercial farming on residential plots remains illegal in Vancouver, despite the fact that local food production forms a key pillar of Vancouver’s plan to become the world’s greenest city by 2020. Insurance companies don’t cover operations that contravene municipal by-laws.

It’s a by-law the city’s commercial urban farmers say needs to be changed.

How local farming works in Vancouver

Julia Smith doesn’t remember ever deciding to become a commercial farmer.

Smith's front yard in 2011 after she caught what she calls the "virus" of food production (Photo by Julia Smith)

After moving to a new Vancouver house with a lot of lawn space that needed tending, she noticed an ad on Craigslist posted by someone looking for land to cultivate. Hoping to reduce the time she would have to spend mowing the lawn, she answered the ad, and soon a woman came over and sowed some seeds.

After watching how it was done, Smith started growing her own food, soon growing so much that she had extra left over. “I ended up selling some food to some people, and they wanted more,” she recalls.

But with her own yard maxed out, Smith found herself looking for landowners who wanted their yards turned into vegetable gardens.

“Next thing I knew, I was an urban farmer.”

Most land cultivated by urban farmers in Vancouver is owned by private residents, according to Marc Schutzbank, a graduate student at the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC. The landowners allow urban farmers to cultivate their yards in exchange for a tended garden and a weekly box of fresh produce during the growing season. Contracts are usually informal but farmers often request a commitment of three years in order to amortize the initial commitment of time and resources.

The farmers then sell their produce to pre-paying customers as part of a community-sponsored agriculture (CSA) program. The first CSA in Vancouver started in 2007, when a few like-minded individuals put their green thumbs together and created a network of farmers across the city. By 2011, there were 13 CSAs operated in the city, according to a not-yet-published study by Schutzbank.

“It’s not reasonable for us to operate without insurance,” says Smith.  ”We’re growing people’s food.”

According to Schutzbank’s research, in 2010, Vancouver’s urban farmers tended an average of seven donated residential plots. Farmers rarely solicit for land, as the demand for farming services is high.

Smith’s own experience echoes Schutzbank’s findings. “The demand is there,” she says. “The biggest issue for urban farmers right now is making it legal.”

Push for changing policy

Like commercial farms within the city today, just over a decade ago, farmers’ markets in Vancouver were illegal.

A woman shops at the Winter Farmers' Market at Nat Bailey Stadium (Photo by Julia Kalinina)

“When we started, we were always in contravention to by-laws,” says Roberta LaQuaglia, operations manager at Vancouver Farmers’ Markets, a non-profit society that fought for direct market access in Vancouver for B.C. farmers. “We were squatting on private property.”

However, because of high demand for local food, the city first turned a blind eye to the markets, and then changed by-laws to make them legal.

Last year, the City of Vancouver donated $10,000 to support the Urban Farmers’ Forum, which brought urban agriculture stakeholders and public officials together to discuss policy change.

“They essentially paid for the forum,” says Thoreau, who helped to organize the event.

And while commercial farming remains illegal, many urban farmers also say that tacit support comes from a lack of by-law enforcement.

“Most of us are carrying on as if it’s legal,” says Thoreau. “The city has turned a blind eye.”

According to City Councillor Andrea Reimer, council recognizes the role of local food production in Vancouver’s sustainability goals, but notes that policy change takes time.

“The issue of commercial activity happening in residential areas is a challenging one, because where do you draw the line? If we’re going to allow food production to be a legal commercial activity in a residential zone, then why not making bread?

“We have to assess all the impacts — the noise, trucks, everything.”

Creative solutions while waiting for change

While waiting for a change in policy, farmers who cannot insure the commercial production of food on residential property find creative ways of managing the problem.

Emi Do and a volunteer weed one of the Yummy Yards plots in Kitsilano (Photo by Julia Kalinina)

Emi Do, who works closely with Smith, says that she added a landscaping arm to her urban farming business after signing an insurance agreement and then expanded commercial production outside of Vancouver.

“I come in [to residential properties] and set up a food production site,” says Do, who grows everything from herbs such as tarragon, oregano, rosemary, mint, and thyme, to salad greens, like kale and mustards, to root vegetables and cherry tomatoes. “And [the owners] pay me like they pay any landscaper.”

“Instead of getting cut flowers or your lawn mowed, you get a basket of produce on your doorstep.”

Others grow food and ignore business insurance entirely.

Demand for a better food production system

Producing food locally reduces greenhouse gas emissions and stimulates local economies by re-circulating money and creating an income multiplier effect, according to research done by Chris Hild, a policy adviser for the city’s food system.

Such findings are perhaps the biggest reasons for cities to make commercial urban farming legal, says Hild, “provided it is conducted in a way that is fair as well as safe for human consumption.”

For Vancouver farmers, producing on small plots in the city means lower costs and the advantage of selling directly to customers, thus avoiding handling fees.

Despite these benefits, locally produced food is often criticized as overpriced and unaffordable. But growers say that the higher price reflects environmental and health externalities and producers receiving a fair income.

“There are subsidies in the lower price,” says Thoreau. “You’re not seeing the cost of environmental degradation or abusive practices. Even organic food is probably priced lower than it really is.”

According to Schutzbank, a large part of the work that urban farmers are doing is changing attitudes toward local food production.

“[They are] changing the idea that it’s just for rich foodies. It’s for everybody,” he says.

A farmer from the Lower Mainland at the Winter Farmers' Market near Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver (Photo: Julia Kalinina)

Some signs indicate that minds are changing.

Since Vancouver’s first farmers’ market at the Croatian Cultural Centre in 1995, traffic rose from 1,000 weekly customers and $50,000 in annual sales to 10,000 customers a week and almost $5.5 million in 2011.

Ultimately, however, many urban farmers say that sustainability depends on consumers.

“It’s the consumer who’s going to make the choice to pay the prices that will make [the urban farming model] sustainable,” says Smith. “We all have to take responsibility for our food system.”

Thoreau says that the economic situation might be a barrier to increased demand for local produce.

But, he adds, “We are trying to promote the bigger picture.”

How CSAs work

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs are a distribution method that farms use to manage risk by establishing a reliable source of demand for their products.

First, farmers estimate how much food their land will yield. They then divide the total expected yield into shares, each share calculated to feed one family.

CSA shares are then sold to customers. In other words, people “buy-in” the growing season.

One CSA share entitles consumers to a weekly box of fresh produce for the duration of the growing season, usually 17-20 weeks. Each box feeds 2-4 people.

Vancouver’s CSA shares sell for $500-$720, a price which often includes delivery of the produce.

In times of abundance, CSA produce often comes to consumers at a discount, as farmers increase supply in order to avoid waste.

Overview of Iona Island treatment plant (Image courtesy of Metro Vancouver)

On a stormy day, angry surf crashes against the Iona Island jetty with enough force to shake its foundations. The jetty is a 4-kilometre needle of land that sticks out into the Strait of Georgia, exposure that ensures it’s in need of constant repair.

It costs the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) up to $2.5 million annually to keep the jetty from washing away, but it’s money well spent. The jetty’s rocks protect a 7.5-kilometre-long deep sea pipe that disposes approximately 500 million litres of treated sewage from the Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant each day.

But the plant, and the pipe attached to it, are two pieces of Metro Vancouver infrastructure most vulnerable to climate change. And the money spent by the GVRD to shore up the Iona Island jetty represents a small foretaste of the hundreds of millions of dollars that will be needed to protect the city’s sewer system in coming years.

Iona plant at risk

The Iona Island plant, built in 1963, treats the waste of more than 600,000 Metro Vancouver residents, representing a major piece of infrastructure. But like many wastewater treatment plants in coastal cities, it was built near the water, where gravity, and proximity to the plant’s disposal point — the ocean — would help save money.

Iona’s location at the mouth of the Fraser River puts it “front and centre” of Metro Vancouver’s efforts to deal with increased storms and rising sea levels, said John Clague, a Simon Fraser University (SFU) geoscientist and research chair of SFU’s Centre for Natural Hazards Research.

Now, however, the plant’s convenient location is proving its Achilles’ heel, for with climate change comes rising oceans, increased rainfall and more intense storms which, when combined, risk flooding the plant.

“It’s not the gradual rise in sea level; it’s the severe storm that works on the ocean when it’s at a higher level that raises the likelihood that waters will over-top the dyke,” said Clague. “They’re not designed for water levels that are 70 centimetres higher than they are today.”

Clague also spoke on sea level rise for the North-Eastern Pacific ocean during the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, hosted in Vancouver this February. He provided revised statistics on sea level rise that showed past projections, such as those provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had been conservative.

The West Coast should expect an average sea level rise of 70 cm to over a metre by the end of the century, said Clague. For Iona, however, that rise in sea level is paired with subsidence of the land it rests on.  Iona Island, like much of the Fraser River delta, is slowly sinking at a rate of one to two millimetres each year.

“That plant isn’t designed to sit in standing water,” said Clague.

The confluence of sea level rise and sinking land are what make Iona so vulnerable.  A 2008 report for the GVRD said the two forces left “very little margin… available in the future” for the Iona Island plant. The 2008 report’s projections were based on an average sea-level rise of 50 cm.

Brent Burton, a senior engineer for the GVRD, said the plant faces a host of problems brought by climate change. The jetty is at risk of being eroded by higher, stormier seas, and the island’s dykes will need to be raised, too.

Rising water tables pose another risk by putting more pressure on building foundations, said Burton, and an increase in rainstorms could overwhelm the plant. Indeed, in December 2009, heavy rains and severe weather caused Iona to lose power and discharge 116 million litres of under-treated sewage into the ocean.

Paying for new sewerage

The spectre of climate change comes as the Iona plant’s operators and owners, the GVRD, intend to replace the old plant in order to fix its dirty reputation.

The GVRD plans to spend $1 billion to build a new secondary treatment plant at Iona by 2030 and possibly as early as 2022-24, said Burton.

He said a small portion of the total sum will be needed to shore up Iona from climate change. The money will be used to ensure the plant lasts until 2100, when it is scheduled to be retired.

But a far pricier problem for municipal wallets will come from fixing sewers. Currently, Vancouver’s combined sewer system channels excess storm water from city streets into the Iona plant. The City of Vancouver has pledged to segregate its sewers by 2050 in part to reduce the stress on Iona.

A 2012 administrative report by the city found the tab for replacing aging pipes will be expensive. Current sewerage costs of roughly $45 million a year are estimated to increase beyond $160 million annually by 2030, which will translate into raised sewerage rates for Vancouver homeowners.

The price of climate change

Sewerage, nonetheless, represents just a fraction of a far greater problem.

A 2009 study conducted by the United Kingdom-based Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research concluded that a sea level rise of 0.5 metres by 2050 would put $28 trillion (U.S.) worth of assets in 136 major coastal cities under threat. If that’s the case, Metro Vancouver ports and the Tsawassen ferry terminal would have to be reinforced against rising seas. And according to Clague, Richmond and Delta would need to raise their dykes, which would cost some $200 million.

Sewerage, out of sight beneath city streets, is where the costs of climate change will be felt first, and the cost of maintaining sewerage will only grow in coming years.

The sooner municipalities can act, “the less [they're] going to have to take out of the bank later on,” said David Flanders. He works on Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP), a University of British Columbia (UBC) project that provides B.C. communities with 3D visualizations for climate change adaptation strategies.

“The place to start would be locally and very, very small,” he said.

Protecting Iona

There are a number of ways that the pressure on the Iona plant and Vancouver sewage system could be relieved that would be cost effective and have additional environmental benefits.

Some solutions are simple. For example, a 2008 Metro Vancouver report found that the impact of increased heavy rainfalls could be reduced by installing green infrastructure such as porous pavement, rain gardens, green roofs, and rain barrels to capture extra water. That stored water, in turn, could be used to irrigate lawns and gardens during hot summer months.

A far more labour-intensive solution for protecting the plant would involve rejigging how the Metro Vancouver wastewater system works. Part of that solution involves segregating sewers, which the City of Vancouver has pledged to do.

But Christianne Wilhelmson, executive director of the Georgia Strait Alliance, said the GVRD’s plans to replace the old Iona plant also provide an opportunity to innovate on how we deal with wastewater.

Iona and the Lions Gate wastewater treatment plants — which only offer primary treatment of sewage — have been in the crosshairs of environmental groups for a decade. Wilhelmson said she was involved in litigation against the two plants for failing monthly toxicity tests mandated by the federal Fisheries Act.

The new Iona plant can’t “be like we built it 40 years ago,” she said.

She recommended a system of smaller, distributed wastewater treatment plants — rather than a single, centralized one — as a way to assist or replace Iona.

A 2008 Capital Region District (CRD) report on Victoria sewerage recommended a distributed system of smaller plants as an alternative to installing a large secondary treatment plant. The report found smaller plants could cut CRD infrastructure greenhouse gas emissions by a quarter and help save $6 million in annual energy costs.

As an added benefit, smaller plants could be located in neighbourhoods away from rising seas, said Wilhelmson.

“I don’t think people understand how things have changed; they still have a view of wastewater treatment plants as being stinky and horrible,” she said.

Burton said the GVRD is currently drafting a report, due out in 2014, that will name specifics on the budget and strategies for protecting the Iona plant from the effects of climate change. Installing distributed plants is one item being considered, he said.

In other words, the threat climate change poses to sewerage, and the coming environmental and fiscal costs, has opened a space for a quiet meeting of minds between environmentalists and city engineers.

View Metro Vancouver wastewater treatment plants in a larger map

The Vancouver Convention Centre seen at low tide with the top bench of the habitat skirt visible (Photo by Lindsay Sample)

Long before it became the ‘condo city,’ the prized waterfront real estate of Vancouver was home to towering kelp forests, roaming herds of sea urchins and beaches blanketed with shellfish. The creatures that depend on those staples as food — like salmon, sea otters, seals and even whales — were abundant in Vancouver’s waters.

Many species have since left Burrard Inlet and False Creek, but it was not the crippling housing prices that forced them out. Constructing a world-class waterfront requires destroying shoreline to build popular features like seawalls, marinas and commercial ports. As the skyline continues to expand, fewer and fewer refuges remain for marine life to call home.

Can’t handle the stress

Eighty per cent of Vancouver’s natural coast has been converted into man-made shoreline over the last century. Jamie Slogan, a marine ecologist who has worked all over the world and is now based in Vancouver, says many marine species “just can’t handle the stress we put on them” by abruptly altering their natural environments.

Slogan is the lead researcher on a groundbreaking project at the Vancouver Convention Center (VCC). The project is renewing habitat for nearly 100 species displaced by shoreline change in Burrard Inlet. It has transformed an industrially polluted section of coast into a thriving marine ecosystem and offers hope for the future of biodiversity on Vancouver’s shores.

“The new convention centre extends about 50 metres on to the ocean,” Slogan explains. “They’re required by law, by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, to compensate for habitat damaged by the construction. The amount of new habitat had to equal the habitat that was lost.”

Waterfront developments, like the VCC, require destroying gradually sloping shorelines in favour of vertical walls that prevent buildings from falling into the sea. Seaweed and shellfish vital to ecosystems have difficulty attaching to smooth vertical walls.

A century ago, entire beaches, like this boulder on the North Shore of Burrard Inlet, were covered in mats of shellfish (Photo by Lucas Powers)

There is a struggle between what architects and biologists want on shorelines, says Cristina Bump, a Boston-based architect who is re-thinking urban waterfronts to promote biodiversity on seawalls.

“There’s obviously a stark contrast between something that is not touched by man. It’s wild, there’s nooks and crannies, there’s lots of different tide level depths, and then we come in and we make these vertical seawalls, and we basically make everything sleek,” says Bump.

“Things like that don’t provide anything for marine wildlife to grow on,” and she hopes to change that.

World’s first habitat skirt

Compensation efforts to make up for a loss of a gradual slope usually means dumping large rock piles, meant to act as shallow reefs, on to the ocean floor adjacent to the shore. But the new VCC juts out over water that is too deep for this conventional method to work, so the developers needed an innovative solution to meet the DFO’s standards.

Slogan’s employer, an environmental engineering firm called EBA Tetra Tech, got the contract.

“We came up with the idea of suspending an artificial habitat structure right off the building in the tidal range, rather than building it up from the seafloor,” says Rick Hoos, a senior marine biologist at EBA who oversaw the project.

“All the other potential options were just not feasible, outrageously expensive or both.”

The design they created is called a ‘habitat skirt.’ It’s the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

The structure mimics the rocky shorelines common to British Columbia, extending for 477 metres around the convention centre’s waterfront façade. It provides familiar habitat for species that live in the intertidal zone.

Creatures moved in to the area quickly. Now, after three years, the skirt supports more species than a natural site just downshore, according to Slogan.

He recently submitted his research to the DFO for approval. He insists the most vital function of the skirt is that it fills gaps in the natural shoreline. Migrating salmon need consistency in the coastline to successfully make it to the open ocean.

“A primary objective was to create an artificial shoreline for juvenile salmonids to follow because they like to follow shorelines on their journey out of the rivers,” he explains.

“If you go down there right now, you’ll see thousands of juvenile salmon swimming past on their way out to the ocean.”

Natural rocky shorelines, like this outcrop near Third Beach in Vancouver's Stanley Park, allow for tidal pools to form at low tide (Photo by Lucas Powers)

A  habitat skirt is not the only way to bring back marine life to urban shores. Researchers on Vancouver’s North Shore and as far away as Sydney and Seattle have shown that minor modifications to existing seawalls can have major impacts on coastal biodiversity.

Listen: Marine biologist Scott Christie on West Vancouver’s shoreline rehabilitation efforts (1:12)

Biologists believe this should be the norm, but they also know that legislation has helped to make it a reality.

Possible legislation change creates a doubtful future

The VCC habitat restoration project is a result of the Fisheries Act. It dates back to the repatriation of the constitution in 1982. The Fisheries Act gives the federal government the power necessary to ensure the conservation of Canada’s aquatic resources.

Under Section 35, whenever structures that may harm fish habitat are built on water — like the VCC — the developer must compensate with an equal amount of new artificial habitat. The compensation must be reviewed and accepted by the DFO.

“It’s a strong piece of legislation,” says Mark Hume, a national columnist for the Globe and Mail who focuses on issues in B.C. “Probably the most powerful piece of environmental protection legislation in the country.”

Critics of the Fisheries Act have argued that it is too powerful, placing unnecessary delays on waterfront projects and protecting habitat even where there are no fish.

In mid-March a document leaked from Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield’s office that suggests major changes intended to restrict the act’s power could be coming. Ashfield hopes to amend the act to limit its protection to “economically valuable” fish species.

“The amendments are intended to make it more reasonable,” says Hoos. “Depending on how it is interpreted by the DFO, it can be almost impossible to meet the requirements.”

The proposed changes have caused an outcry.

“Groups nation-wide representing tens of thousands of Canadians are on record urging the federal government to re-think its plan to eliminate longstanding environmental protections,” says Jessica Clogg, executive director of West Coast Environmental Law.

“If these changes go ahead as proposed, it will make it ineffective. It just won’t have any impact,” says Hume. “Why would a developer spend more money than they have to?”

Slogan points out that the habitat skirt project may never have happened if it wasn’t required by law.

“It cost around $8 million to do, and that’s a lot. But it was worth it because of the things we have managed to do in terms of species,” he says.

If you build it, they will come

• The habitat skirt unexpectedly became a nursery for thousands of Dungeness crabs attracted to food sources, like seaweeds, that have colonized the skirt.
• Ling cod and rock fish, predatory fish species with very limited habitat in Burrard Inlet, have returned.
• Dense forests of bull kelp have become established all around the skirt.
• Sea urchins have taken to feeding on the algae on the lower benches. “The increase in predators is a strong indicator that the habitat skirt is effectively functioning in the manger of a typical intertidal habitat,” writes Slogan in his 2012 report on the project.

According to a statement by Environment Minister Peter Kent on Environment Canada’s website, the accord “is not the path forward for a global solution to climate change; instead, it is an impediment.”

The world consensus through the International Panel for Climate Change reports that climate change is caused by human activities and is one of the greatest environmental threats we face today.

Canada, meanwhile, is one of the largest producers of greenhouse gas emissions per capita in the world, according to the Conference Board of Canada.

With the government decision to withdraw from Kyoto, what is Canada doing to fight climate change?

A view of the earth from space (Image courtesy of NASA)

Over 2,000 students from all over the world recently gathered at the Vancouver Convention Centre for the 21st World Model United Nations Conference. Also known as WorldMUN 2012, it is an annual student simulation of the UN.

The local and international students attending the mini-UN came to debate, negotiate and solve challenging global issues, such as the Israel-Palestine conflict and the European debt crisis. During the five-day conference, they tried to bring a fresh perspective to global politics. To do so, they emulated global leaders through role play.

But students at WorldMUN faced another challenge: they had to represent a country that was not their own.

“WorldMUN spirit”

Sabri Bezzazi, a Tunisian citizen who studies in Lebanon, represented the Netherlands in a mock Economic and Financial Committee.

“Even though I’m portraying someone else, it’s through making blocs and alliances with other neighbouring countries that we will find a way towards creative solutions,” Bezzazi said.

Becoming a diplomat, however, is not easy.

Mariana Guasch, a participant from Spain, worked as an adviser at WorldMUN 2012. She said she studied eight hours a week to pass the test to become a diplomat for Spain. Coming to Vancouver was a welcome break in her long days.

She discovered the “WorldMUN spirit” last year while participating in the WorldMUN 2011 summit in Singapore.

“It’s a spirit that takes you over during five days of committees,” said Guasch. “You sort of feel that what you’re doing here has a meaning.”

UBC chairs

University of British Columbia students partnered with students at Harvard to organize the event. The rules, set jointly by Harvard and a different partner university each year, state that students of the two organizing schools cannot participate as delegates, but can be chairs or assistant chairs within the committees.

UBC student Elaine Chin was an assistant chair at WorldMUN 2012. She viewed UBC hosting the event as a “privilege.”

“You can participate as a delegate in any WorldMUN every year, but you only get one chance to be an assistant chair or to be on the hosting committee,” said Chin.

Participants are expected to research and understand the country they represent.

Elena Allendorfer, who is from Germany, represented Switzerland. As a student of international history, she said she was not a typical participant.

“I’ve put a lot of efforts and preparation into this since I’m not a law student,” said Allendorfer. She said she was very impressed by the performance of other students, whom she described as “very well prepared about international law.”

WorldMUN provides more than just internal legal experience. Many students see the conference as an opportunity for networking and as preparation for a future career as a diplomat.

Indeed, many of the students want to work with international organizations like the UN in the future. They hoped this experience in Vancouver would give them a better understanding of each other and of the world.