The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says they already have a top contender for their 2015 Teddy Awards singling out government waste.
Metro Vancouver’s Annacis Island Wastewater Academy is a $9 million classroom and lecture facility attached to the Annacis Island sewage treatment plant.
The building features a rainwater runoff collection system, beams made of laminated timber, and the facility is heated and cooled by wastewater.
Metro Vancouver was hoping to attract UBC students in the wastewater field to the facility, but the university says a formal agreement was never reached.
UBC issued the following statement to Global News on their involvement with the wastewater academy:
“Although various sums and funding models were bandied about in early discussions of this project, a formal final agreement of $1 million was never reached.
UBC and Metro Vancouver exchanged letters in 2011, stating that UBC would fund the Annacis Island Academy operated by Metro Vancouver to the tune of $90,000 per year for six years, for a total of $540,000.
Both letters make clear that this funding is subject to further negotiations over a detailed Memorandum of Understanding and the establishment of a proper stakeholders governance board.
That MOU has never been completed and we do not have such a governance board in place.
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UBC has consistently indicated a desire to move ahead. Over the past two years, UBC has set the committed funds aside and awaits a decision from Metro regarding the MOU.
It is important to note that despite the administrative limbo, UBC engineering professor Don Mavinic has been running a number of research projects at the facility and held open houses on the site – mostly paid for out of his own research grants.
The Annacis Island Academy remains an important and viable initiative but one that will require action from Metro Vancouver to bring to fruition.”
The wastewater academy is facing a $390,000 annual deficit.
“We are really looking forward to a big interest from both the private sector and academia, and anyone who’s interested in wastewater education. This can provide a centre they can all use, and come together, it’s already attracting quite a bit of attention,” said former Metro Vancouver Commissioner and Chief Administrative Officer Johnny Carline in a promotional video when the plant opened in 2011.
Carline has since retired.
“We really hope it becomes a hub where a lot of people in the wastewater field will congregate and network,” said Sustainability Academy Manager Laurie Fretz in the same Metro Vancouver promotional video.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the academy is “a colossal waste of taxpayer money.”
“No doubt event planners will beat a path to the door of a conference centre, attached to a sewage treatment plant, in an industrial park, miles from the nearest hotel or other amenities, on an island under a bridge. TEDTalks must be calling every hour trying to get in,” said Jordan Bateman, B.C. Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, in a blog post.
White Rock Mayor Wayne Baldwin questioned the academy’s viability in a Metro Vancouver board meeting on February 28.
“A sewage treatment plant is not really the best place for conventions,” said Baldwin. “The hole just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” Baldwin said, noting the project ballooned in cost from its original estimate of $4 million. “I don’t know why we would want to continue with this.”
Metro Vancouver is now trying to rent out the meeting room to outside customers in order to stem losses.
Just last week, a little-used park-and-ride lot operated by Translink in Surrey won a Teddy Award for government waste.
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