March 17, 2016

Rep. Kilmer goes to White House state dinner after talking Victoria sewage with Trudeau

Two-term U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., had two very different encounters on Thursday with Canada's new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Kilmer went to the White House on Thursday night with senior members of Congress, diplomats, business leaders and Canadian-born celebrities as guests at a state dinner honoring Trudeau.

Kilmer was in the company of actor Michael J. Fox, "Wayne's World" star Mike Myers, and "Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels.

The dinner even featured a celebrity from the past -- the prime minister's mother, Margaret Trudeau.

But Kilmer and six other House members met with the prime minister earlier in the day. And Kilmer raised a distasteful subject.

He asked Trudeau when Victoria will stop dumping 34 million gallons of raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca each day.

Trudeau is probably asking the same question.  A handsome chunk of Canadian government cash -- $83.8 million -- is earmarked to help Victoria clean up its poop.  Only on Wednesday, however, did the British Columbia capital and nearby municipalities come up with two sites for a treatment plant.

A longtime bigwig in Trudeau's Liberal Party, Canada's ex-environment minister David Anderson, served as MP for Victoria and adamantly denied that the city needed to treat its sewage.

But Kilmer represents the U.S. side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where cities like Port Townsend, Sequim and Port Angeles were required to treat their effluent four decades ago.

"Ensuring that Canada addresses the continued dumping of raw sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca is part of being a good neighbor," Kilmer said later.


By:  Joel Connelly
Source: Seattle P-I