Post 182--Irresponsible Boaters Saddle Me with E.coli and Taxes

A Wimpy City Council Enables Irresponsible Boaters

I live in one of the most desirable places in one of the most livable places in the world, as world polsters insist. In fact, my city is often cited as the most livable of all cities.  I suspect that’s an exaggeration, gross even.  Perhaps it’s most desirable for the rich cats, like corporate CEO’s who are parachuted into the city along with their absurd salaries and perks.  It hardly can be the most desirable for the residents of Canada’s poorest postal code, the East Side of the city, popularly referred to as DTES or Down Town East Side. Neither can it be the most desirable for the mostly young people who cannot afford to get into the housing market because it has spiraled out of control and is way beyond them.  But for me and Fran, my wife, it is definitely the best of all cities in the world for a whole bunch of reasons I will not bore you with. 

The city?  If you’ve been reading my blogs, you will know it is none other than Vancouver, British Columbia, on Canada’s Pacific West Coast. We’ve lived on three continents and four countries; we’ve traveled to over 40 countries, but we for ourselves prefer Vancouver as a place to live above every other place, even those we have not visited. 

Our city location?  The West End (WE).  Where within WE?  Davie Village, the very centre of the street at Davie and Bute. The new plaza recently built amounts to our front yard and that has made it twice as pleasant as it already was, what with all the places we need to go within a few minutes walking—groceries, restaurants, dollar store, doctor, dentist, sea wall, Stanley and other nearby parks and swimming place, both in and outdoor--you name it and it’s there all within a few minutes.  Don’t even need a car to get around.  Legs and transit are all you need, thank you. If you have legs stronger than our senior ones, bikes are helpful as well.

But the place is not a paradise; it has its very serious problems and inconveniences—and some yucky places that just plain make you mad. Just four blocks down the steep hill from our rental unit there’s the Sea Wall alongside False Creek, a beautiful place to walk, saunter, sit, relax and enjoy. If you need proof of that, come and check out the crowds making use of the place on any sunny and even not-so-sunny days. 

So what’s the problem?  Crap, that’s what it is. Sorry for the coarse word, but what it describes cannot be put in polite Christian language.  You need a more acceptable word? Well, the article from I am drawing uses the term “waste.”  For me, that doesn’t do it; it’s much worse. It’s the crap that boaters dump into the waters of False Creek and has so contaminated the place that its level of E.coli is too high for safe swimming.  Fran and I cannot swim in that most beautiful and natural swimming place just down the street from us.

And that only because of egoistic and irresponsible boaters who can’t be bothered using the facilities that are in place to dump their crap.  The city has been offering two free sewage pump-out stations for people to use, but you think they care enough to take the trouble?  No, too much trouble.  Jonathan Paetkau, a company that is now providing the new additional  free pump-out service, suggests that “one of the main reasons people are not using the city pump-outs is it takes a lot of time to move your boat off the dock, take it to a pump-out , pump it out and take it back to the dock.”  However, “if there’s a way they can pump out their boats without that stress, they are happy about that.”  Another boater said, “The whole pump-out situation was too messy, too stinky and really haphazard.” So, just dump it into these pristine waters in the middle of a great city and let the community suffer from it. Who cares?

The new facility referred to consists of two pump-out boats that visit the boats and relieve them—again free of charge,  at least, to them, but I pay for it via taxes.  So, here we have another case so typical of this city. Instead of forcing responsibility on people, they find a tax-supported way of evading responsibility for eliminating the problem without forcing a change in behaviour.  Not even when His Handsomeness, the Mayor, admits publicly that these boaters “have no business pumping any of their sewage into False Creek.”  Indeed, but does the Mayor have any business charging me for the privilege of boat life that these people apparently love?  I think not.

I believe I have a better suggestion.  At the beginning of the city’s tax year, charge an annual fee to each boater, enough to cover the average annual cost of dumping and some extra to pay for this programme. When at the end of the year a boater can show receipts for having been a responsible dumper, he gets a rebate or it gets applied to the next year. No receipts, no rebate, and that annual fee will apply each time. If the fee is not paid in time, the boat gets hauled away at owner’s expense.

There may be some problems with this approach, especially legal, lawyers will see to that, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. And that’s the problem with the fathers of this most beautiful or livable of most cities: they have no will. They prefer to crawl around a problem to facing it head-on. A city run by lack of resolve. It’s costing me and in the meantime, I have to go elsewhere to swim.

The main source for this post is Wanyee Li, “Mobile pump-out service launches in False Creek.”  MetroNews, August 16, 2017, p. 4. http://www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2017/08/15/vancouver-launches-free-mobile-pump-out-services-for-false-creek-boaters.html.  Thank you, Li.

      

Post 127—Human Plumbing and Culture

I hope you’re ready for another session on human plumbing and how we manage its product.  That management, as we will see today, is usually related to the dominant local culture.  In the last post, we saw how at least some Indians still manage it in a pretty primitive way. Now I don’t know enough about Indian culture to demonstrate my thesis firmly on the influence of culture on the matter, but I can at least make a guess. The Indian practice described in Post 126 must have been influenced by at least two factors.

One of them would be a general traditional ignorance of the impact of hygiene on health. First of all, the people would not be aware that defecating all over the place creates hygienic problems. Secondly, they would not be aware of the danger to health such unhygienic practice creates. Flies crawling all over the excrement and then carrying it with them wherever they go, including humans and food. Well, we know what happens from there on, but those people do not. They are blissfully ignorant of it and so continue to practice their unhealthy tradition. So, one cultural factor is general ignorance of hygiene.

The second cultural factor would be low level of technology combined with a poor economy. It takes a certain level technology and economy to devise better management of sewage. And that technology is pushed by growing awareness of the dangers of traditional practice. When people become aware of the danger, they will be motivated to take the bull by the horns and devise more healthy management practices. I have read various publications that claim the rapid increase in the health level of Westerners during the 19^th century was due more to the improvement in sewage systems than to improved medical science. And that came along with the general rise of technology—the Industrial Revolution, remember? 

Bring these two cultural developments together and you will soon have a management system that almost makes the sewage invisible so that the general population almost forgets about it. In any modern city like Vancouver, where I live, I am blissfully ignorant as to where mine goes, how it gets there and what happens to it. Never really think of it—until, of course, the system develops plumbing problems and then we call in a plumber with all her sophisticated equipment. “Her” did I say? Well, probably not. I have yet to meet a lady plumber!

But then there is an even deeper factor that can play a role—anthropology. That’s a fancy term referring to a culture’s view about human beings, who or what we are. I have lived for many years in a culture where the local chief was regarded a demi-god with all the men of the community in some way sharing that status. They could not imagine that gods would have such human problems as defecation and so they pretended the chief and all the man did not defecate. I don’t know how the chief handled that pretense, but for ordinary males this meant they would do their thing in the bush or forest. There were no toilets in such communities, for that would entail an unwanted admission. So everyone else, women and children, though no demi-gods, also had no choice but the bush, for no provisions for them were made either. Not only were there no provisions, but no one would speak about the subject. It was a taboo.

A breakthrough came. After decades of missionary work in the area, the myth began to break down. The young church was one of the first to build a toilet in the town. It was a simple structure of a grass matting surrounding a deep hole. But it was built only a few feet away from the well from which they drew the water needed for the church’s cooking events!  The people did not see the dangerous connection! 

Another breakthrough came, a negative one: a cholera plague that killed many people in just a few days. The local government medical officer quickly called a meeting of all the religious leaders of the two dominant religions, Christianity and Islam. He begged these leaders to preach on the need for hygiene, including toilets, to contain the plague. It so happens it was my turn to preach that Sunday.  

I decided to preach on an Old Testament text that instructed the people to bury their excrement in a hole outside the camp.

 Mark out an area outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourselves. Along with your weapons have a stick with you. After you relieve yourself, dig a hole with the stick and cover your excrement.God, your God, strolls through your camp; He’s present…. Keep your camp holy; don’t permit anything indecent or offensive in God’s eyes (The Message, Deuteronomy 23:12-13).

 I knew it was culturally inappropriate to speak about such matters. So I consulted a church elder and friend who was to translate my Hausa-language sermon into another language. He advised me I should go ahead and preach that sermon and promised to translate faithfully, even if it was culturally inappropriate. So I did. I preached a sentence or two and he would translate. So we would alternate. Suddenly, in the middle of the sermon, a very influential man stood up and yelled something in the local language which I did not understand. My translator brushed it off and told me to continue, but my heart was out of it. After the service, I was told that man yelled that the translator should not beat around the bush! Say it as I said it! However, my sermon was not lost on most, for they understood the Hausa language.

Thus, another humorous story, but also an indication how culture can influence such matters. Though comparatively free from that tradition, it was not enough for him to translate the message straight. However, people did begin to construct toilets in their compounds. A combination of disease, new awareness and the gospel brought about a radical change in the way the people saw themselves and that, in turn, led to a breakdown of that particular tradition—and did so for the good of the entire community. I never learned how this was solved for the chief himself or what effect this may have had on his alleged semi-divinity. I do know that the church did not openly challenge it ever but played along with it good naturedly, even though over time the chiefs were all Christian.