Victoria, BC's practice of dumping raw sewage into the Georgia Straight is one step closer to being over. The clear recommendation from an independent scientific panel is that the Capitol Regional District's practice of dumping of 129 million litres of sewage every day is no longer an answer and that the city should consider options for sewage treatment.

The panel's report strongly criticized nearly every aspect of Victoria's sewage management including both monitoring and its ability to control current and emerging contaminants. Among these contaminants are PCBs, a bio-accumulative toxin found in sewage that is a significant factor in the rapid decline of the endangered southern resident orca population of the Georgia Straight.