Dawson seeks 3-year extension on sewage lagoon deadline

The town of Dawson City, Yukon, is under mounting pressure to prove it's moving ahead on plans to build a court-ordered sewage treatment plant, as a judicial review of those plans gets underway Thursday.

Yukon Territorial Court Judge Heino Lillies is in Dawson Thursday to check on progress on the $14-million lagoon project, which began when the court fined the town in 2003 for dumping raw sewage into the Yukon River.

Lillies has ordered the town to build a secondary treatment system by the end of 2008, but to date construction has not started. Engineers are now asking Lillies for another three-year extension on the deadline, as they say it will take them until 2011 to finish construction.

The project is already three years past its original court-imposed completion deadline.

Mayor John Steins said Dawson is moving as fast as it can to comply with the court order, but accused federal prosecutors with Environment Canada of picking on his town.

"Environment Canada is hell-bent on making Dawson an example, and they will do whatever it takes to accomplish that," he said Wednesday.

"There are a lot of other municipalities in Canada that are dumping deleterious material into the oceans and whatnot, like Victoria for example, and nothing is being done with them. I do point out the fact that we are a town of 1,800 people, and to use us as an example, I think, is in some regards unfair."

Steins said he expects prosecutors will call for Lillies to impose a strict construction schedule with interim milestones and non-compliance fines attached to those milestones. But he noted that the lagoon project still requires approvals from the Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Board.

"Obviously, it would be unreasonable to be fined for missing a milestone over which we have no control," he said.

The lagoon plans have recently been under fire by residents, including local hotel owner and former Yukon health minister Peter Jenkins.

He told CBC News earlier this month that the chosen site for the facility at the entrance to town, near the ball diamonds would contaminate the town's underground wells, which are also nearby. Another resident has circulated a petition opposing the lagoon's location.