ON VICTORIA'S INNER HARBOUR, HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGES TAKE TOURISTS PAST THE THE PARLIAMENT BUILDING AND THE EMPRESS HOTEL, WHERE HIGH TEA IS SERVED IN THE BRITISH TRADITION. BUT ABOUT A MILE AWAY IS THE UNDERBELLY, OR PERHAPS THE LARGE INTESTINE, OF THIS PROPER PROVINCIAL CAPITAL.

JIM MCFARLAND MANAGES THE CLOVER POINT WASTEWATER PUMPING STATION. IT'S MOSTLY HIDDEN UNDERGROUND IN A CITY PARK, ON A SMALL PENINSULA THAT JUTS SOUTH TOWARD PORT ANGELES.

MCFARLAND: "This is the main pump room. We have four sewage pumps... "

THE PUMP HOUSE IS FILLED WITH ORANGE AND YELLOW PIPES BIG ENOUGH FOR AN ADULT TO CRAWL THROUGH.

MCFARLAND: "We prescreen the sewage thru six-millimeter screens, or a quarter inch, to take out the large, nonorganic material. After the wastewater is screened, it's pumped through these pumps out to sea."

IN A NUTSHELL, VICTORIA IS THE GENTEEL TOURIST TOWN THAT PO...
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Near the U.S.-Canada border, the city of Victoria, British Columbia, pipes its untreated sewage to the bottom of the sea. Swayed by a very strange, seven-foot-tall, falsetto-singing activist, the British Columbia government ordered its capital city to use something besides ocean currents to treat its waste. For part 1 of an award-winning series on the currents of Puget Sound, producer John Ryan went to Victoria to see if dilution is the solution to pollution.