One of my all-time favorite Stupid Government Projects (we should really trademark that term in BC) is the Annacis Wastewater Centre. To refresh your memory, in 2011, Metro Vancouver convinced the two senior levels of government to go in with them on a $9 million, 18,000 sq. ft. conference and research facility located across a parking lot from the Annacis sewage treatment station.

The building loses roughly $400,000 a year in operating costs and, despite Metro’s efforts to spin it as a wonderful place to host meetings, conferences and even weddings, it still sits underused day after day. Because, you know, there just isn’t much market for a conference centre next to a sewage plant in the middle of an industrial park.

In 2015, the Centre was a Teddy Waste Award finalist.

I hadn’t thought of the Annacis boondoggle for a while. And then this story popped up on CBC:

For the thousands of commuters who drive across the Alex Fraser bridge every day, the journey can be a stinky one.

"It's pretty overwhelming, especially in the summer," said Cody Hehr, who lives in North Delta and crosses the bridge often. "If you're going over the bridge on a hot, sunny day, that's all you can smell. And sometimes you're stuck there for an hour, right?"

The stench is caused by the Annacis Wastewater Treatment Plant just below the bridge, which serves 13 municipalities — about one million people.

But the plant is about to undergo a $550 million upgrade so it can serve an additional 250,000 people. And with that upgrade comes $20 million in a new odour control system, which hasn't been updated since the '90s.

The new system will capture odorous air at the plant and treat it chemically before releasing it.

Metro Vancouver says that will vastly improve the amount of odour that makes it to the bridge deck. "I would not say a 100 per cent [improvement], but I would dare to say it would be probably about a 95 to 99 percent," said Simon So, general manager of liquid waste services at Metro Vancouver.

Why didn’t anyone notice this before wasting millions on a conference centre located next door? Just another sad chapter in this neverending book of waste.