The debate over treating the Capital Region’s waste has turned into a sewage-slinging match between area mayors, as international media begin to pay closer attention to the enduring saga.

Despite a looming deadline to choose a site for a sewage treatment plant, local politicians still haven’t been able to reach a consensus.

The CRD has until the end of March to finalize a site or it risks losing upwards of $83-million in funding from the federal government.

Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps chairs the region’s sewage committee and says she’s just trying to stay the course while some of her colleagues keep putting forth new ideas.

“This project has come unwound, this project has come off track far too many times. My job is to steward the process and keep us all moving forward,” she said Tuesday. “It’s frustrating to have mayors commenting when they’re not at the table helping us make the decisions.”

Helps was responding to statements made by Saanich Mayor Richard Atwell, who threatened that the municipality might have to go it alone if the Capital Regional District can’t find a cheaper option than what’s currently on the table.

“At present, a billion-dollar cost, even shared by seven municipalities, is just too high for this region,” Atwell told CTV News. “If the CRD can’t get its act together in the next year to do that, then we may need to look at a made-in-Saanich solution.”

Oak Bay Mayor Nils Jensen has also spoken out against the CRD’s favoured option, a treatment plant in Rock Bay estimated to cost between $1-billion to $1.4-billion.

Jensen has put forward a motion to revisit the idea of building the plant at Esquimalt’s McLoughlin Point, which comes with a cheaper $788-million price tag.

To make matters more confusing, Langford Mayor Stew Young is now publicly musing whether a treatment plant is needed at all.

“You look at what Justin Trudeau has said, and he’s the prime minister now, when he was in Victoria he told us ‘there’s no science behind doing a sewage treatment plan,’” said Young. “So maybe we need to re-look at that if there’s a change in government.”

Sure enough, Trudeau stated his opinion on the idea of a treatment plan during a visit to Victoria four years ago, while seeking leadership of the federal Liberal Party.

“This is a billion dollars of our taxpayer dollars that could go towards treating autistic kids, towards child care, towards improving our schools. That is not going to be money well spent,” he said at the time.

The political quagmire is now even attracting international media attention from Al Jazeera America.

Correspondent Allen Shauffler said he’s covering the story because it’s “fascinating” and has history dating back to the 1980s.

“It’s a major metropolitan area; a very refined, stately, picturesque city, welcoming to all – and it’s dumping sewage into the Strait of Juan de Fuca,” he said. “It’s a political snake-pit. So many different jurisdictions, so many different interests, so many different opinions, so much money. Where does it go? Who pays for it? It’s a tangle.”

Victoria pumps some 130-million litres of untreated effluent into the Juan de Fuca Strait daily.

While some scientists have said the ocean acts as a “toilet” that disperses waste without much environmental impact, environmentalists as well as officials in neighbouring Washington State have criticized the city for its sewage practices.

Public consultation is currently underway, and residents are invited to attend a number of consultation activities or take an online survey to give their opinion on the potential plant sites.