Government-contractor dispute to cost North Shore residents almost $4B

A Vancouver suburb is footing the bill for a non-operational sewage treatment plant that has ballooned from a $500 million project into a nearly $4 billion fiasco.

Source: Wikivoyage

For $5 billion CAD, you could buy the historic NHL franchise Toronto Maple Leafs — valued at just under $4 billion USD. Instead, a Vancouver suburb is footing the bill for a non-operational sewage treatment plant that has ballooned from a $500 million project into a nearly $4 billion fiasco.

The project, located near the Second Narrows Bridge in North Vancouver, was initially awarded to the Spanish infrastructure firm Acciona back in 2017.

Metro Vancouver—a regional governmental organization responsible for managing utilities, planning, and services for 20 other municipalities—terminated that contract in 2021, alleging repeated delays, design problems, and missed deadlines.

Far from resolved, the matter isn't expected to hit the courts until 2027.

True North spoke with a North Shore resident who said the dispute has resulted in nothing but “rusting rebar” and a legal quagmire, leaving him and other North Shore residents on the hook.

“If this could happen here, this could happen anywhere,” he said in a Thursday interview.

As the North Shore homeowner further explained, Metro Vancouver estimates residents like him will need to pay an additional $590 per year for the next 30 years—longer than the maximum allowable mortgage for tier one banks without incurring a risk premium—for a water treatment plant they still don't have and never asked for in the first place.

Two years ago, Delta Mayor George Harvie called the plans for a new regional treatment plant “a federally mandated project,” which is technically accurate.

Under federal regulations introduced in 2012, municipalities are required to upgrade facilities to secondary or tertiary treatment standards by 2030, a deadline Metro Vancouver claims it will now “only just meet.”

Even that timeline remains unclear, however.

The civil trial proceedings between Metro Vancouver and Acciona are expected to formally begin in 2027.

Metro Vancouver says the contractor, Acciona, is responsible for the unfinished project due to construction delays and a rising price tag.

Acciona, meanwhile, counters that Metro Vancouver repeatedly altered design requirements, forcing costly rework, and the matter is now before the courts, with a trial scheduled for March 2027.

A 2022 notice of claim filed by the contractor shows Acciona is seeking $250 million in damages related to the botched construction.

Calls and messages to Acciona were not returned by this article’s time of publication.

Metro Vancouver, meanwhile, has controversially shut down any possibility of a public review.

In a media release last Sunday, which also served as an opinion editorial published in local media, Mike Hurley—a chair of the organization’s board of directors—said Metro Vancouver “made the difficult decision” to postpone an independent review of the fiasco “until after the regional district’s litigation with the former contractor has been resolved.”

According to a July 7 B.C. Supreme Court decision during the civil trial’s discovery phase, Acciona has produced almost four million documents in relation to their case—suggesting the legal snafu between the original contractor and Metro Vancouver remains far from over.