Matsqui Landfill.

Photo credit: Jackie Demmy

There are two forms of liquid waste: treated and untreated.

1) Treated Liquid Waste

"Every day in the Greater Vancouver area, we produce approximately one billion liters of wastewater - or liquid waste? (Greater Vancouver Regional District Sewerage, 2003,  1). Collected wastewater flows to one of the GVRD's five waste water treatment plants (WWTP):

a)      Iona WWTP collects from Vancouver, University of British Columbia, Burnaby and Richmond, and discharges into the Straight of Georgia.

b)     Lions Gate WWTP collects from West Vancouver, and North Vancouver, discharged under the Lion?s Gate Bridge.

c)      Northwest Langley WWTP treats waste from the Walnut Grove area in Langley.

d)     Lulu Island WWTP treats waste from approximately 120,000 residents who live in the western area of the City of Richmond., and discharges in to the Fraser River.

e)      Annacis Island WWTP provides treatment to waste from approximately 740,000 people in: Burnaby, New Westminster, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, Maple Ridge, Surrey, Delta, White Rock, and Langley.

 (Greater Vancouver Regional District Sewerage)

Treatment Plants screen and purify liquid waste through an intensive process. The end-product is then discharge into the environment via the sites listed above. Some pharmaceuticals have been known to degrade slightly through this process, however no specific treatment to remove pharmaceutics is used (Sanderson, Johnsonm Reitsma et al.). In fact, Soliman, Pedersen, and Suffet (2004) determined that water treated through a recycling plant effluent process still demonstrated the presence of ?nearly all targeted compounds at nanograms per litre to micrograms per litre levels? (p. 223). This indicates that, although some waste water is treated, pharmaceuticals are not adequately removed before the water is returned to circulation.

2) Untreated Liquid Waste

While a varying percentage of wastes are treated at the above facilities, some wastes pass directly into the water untreated. Discharges of both treated and untreated waste water occur in:

a)      the Fraser River

b)     Burrard Inlet

c)      the Strait of Georgia

(Greater Vancouver Regional District, Sewerage Treatments, ?1).

Semi-solid Wastes

Screened (solid) sewer wastes are pasteurized by the GVRD WWTPs, termed biosolids, and sold specifically as ?Nutrifor?, a fertilizer-type sludge. This product is trucked mainly to the interior of British Columbia and used for land reclamations at mining sites, or as a fertilizer for pastures and hay fields on ranches.

While this product is an innovation in recycling, land application of biosolids ?may be a potential important route through which pharmaceuticals?enter the environment? (Xia, Bhandari, Das, and Pillar ,2005, p. 91)

Further, cattle at the ranches eat grasses and hay grown from this product, and then are shipped themselves to be slaughtered for human consumption. There is no known concern regarding cattle ingesting pharmaceuticals via a diet ?tainted? with pharmaceuticals in biosolids/Nutrifor, however meat product testing does not test for many common pharmaceuticals.

Bulk Wastes

Bulk or solid waste is sorted in several facilities in the Lower Mainland, with many recyclables removed. The majority of it is then transported to the Cache Creek/ Ashcroft area of the interior of British Columbia. Here it is buried in large quantities for decomposition. Pharmaceutical testing at these landfill sites is neither required nor practiced. Run-off from rain water migrates naturally down the hills towards surface water (the Thompson River). Additionally, wild animals have been known to scavenge through the landfill. It is unknown if they have consumed pharmaceuticals in this way.

Incinerated  and Special Wastes

Many private sharps-disposal companies crush and then incinerate wastes. The exception to this is chemotherapy waste, which is usually placed into a yellow or white sharps container labeled ?chemotherapy waste. This keeps the hazardous chemotherapy drugs from being sewered, and they are shipped to a regulated medical waste incinerator, which operates at high temperatures and with more emissions controls than many other incinerators (Smith, 2000, p. 225). In the GVRD, an innovative incineration plant also creates steam energy which is sold.