Focus on the Environment: Goderich - small town with a sewage system that works

Monday, October 5, 2009

Located on Lake Huron and dependent upon tourism, this town of 8,000 grappled with its thorny sewage bypass problems years ago. And residents have bought in

by DON STONEMAN

Huron County's largest town treats its sewage seriously. Goderich, population 7,500 and perched on the edge of Lake Huron, has an $8 million budget and spends about $2 million a year on water and sewage.

"I have always striven to make sure there was enough money to keep up with technology," says Delbert (Deb) Shewfelt, who has served as mayor of Goderich for 18 years, though he notes that, politically, water and sewage "isn't very sexy. You get a lot more mileage building a new arena."

There's a user pay system for water and sewage, and "our dollars go further" when the town takes advantage of the gasoline tax collected by the federal government that goes to municipalities via the Association of Municipalities of Ontario. A percentage of the gas tax goes to rebuild infrastructure.

"When I was a councillor in the 1960s and it rained, I hated to answer the phone," says Shewfelt. "We don't get those calls anymore," he says.

Goderich went on a 30-year program of separating combined sanitary and storm sewers that was completed last year. According to the town's website, there are 57 kilometres of sanitary sewers and 69 kilometres of water main.

Previously, there were nearly continuous bypasses at the treatment plant, which discharges into Lake Huron near the town's beach. Shewfelt says the Ministry of Environment was applying pressure on the town in the 1990s.

"I think they were ready to take some action," he says.

The town also persuaded homeowners and businesses to disconnect their roof downspouts, something Goderich tried to do in the 1970s and failed.

In the 1990s, residents were more accepting. "Going green is a big issue. More and more people are buying into it," he says. "We've had no complaints about the money spent."

Pressure to clean up the beaches didn't just come from the environment ministry. Goderich wants the international Blue Flag status for its beach.

It had that status in 2008, lost it for 2009 and, because of high E. coli counts in July, failed to qualify for 2010. Jennette Walker, the town's environmental services technologist, reports to Goderich's environment committee regularly and frets over the few bypasses that have taken place. While the sewage treatment plant has been bypassed during storm situations only once in the first six months of 2009, there were four bypasses in the previous year (in September,  when the tail end of a hurricane dumped 100 millimetres or four inches of rain in a little more than 24 hours). Twice last winter, there were rapid snow melts accompanied by heavy rains to also resulted in bypasses.

The cost of replacing sewers varies from as much as $1 million per kilometre for the four-foot diameter pipes by the lake to $300-400,000 for the 12- and 15-inch pipes serving subdivisions that flow into the big pipes, says engineer Steve Burns, B.M. Ross and Associates, which works for the town.

In 2008, the sewage plant handled 2.5 million cubic metres of sewage.

The total amount bypassed was 17,200 cubic metres, or about 0.7 per cent of that flow.
In 2007, the town built two combined sewage overflow tanks at the treatment plant to catch runoff from the sanitary pipes and allow it to be treated slowly after the bypass had ended." We've done all that work, but something that wasn't taken into consideration was climate change," Walker says.

Goderich is in the process of installing an ultraviolet system for treating its sewage, meaning that less chlorine will be used. Rules are coming down, Shewfelt says, and Environment Canada is watching. "We don't want the after-solution of the chlorine being pumped back into the lake."

Shewfelt thinks the next step to tackling pollution on the beaches may be DNA testing of bacteria found there. "We need to know what is giving us some bad days." The Maitland River flows into Lake Huron at Goderich. Based on 1996 figures, Statistics Canada declares that livestock farms in the Maitland River basin produced more manure per hectare than any other watershed in Canada.

Nevertheless, Shewfelt steers clear of blaming farmers.  "I would never make the statement" that the farm community is responsible, he says. "I think there are too many variables." He cites 400 Canada Geese counted in the beach area at any given time. Every time someone takes a dog for a walk, doesn't clean up, and it rains, "it ends up in the lake," Shewfelt points out.

One of the reasons the Goderich water and sewage system works so well, Shewfelt thinks, is that U.S. Filter took over management in a private-public partnership at the same time as the Walkerton crisis struck in 2000.

"If you had a company with a big reputation to protect, I don't think Walkerton would have happened," he asserts.

He gives the city of Toronto "a lot of credit" for the work done there to clean up sewage, but believes they still have a long way to go. "I think they get it. I'm not sure their constituents do."

Shewfelt sits on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative committee to clean up the Great Lakes. Goderich is one of the smaller municipalities represented on the committee. Also sitting on the committee are David Miller and Richard Daley, the mayors of Toronto and Chicago, respectively. BF

Sidebar… But in nearby London, the pressure is on to clean up

A hundred kilometres south of Goderich, the city of London reported more bypasses and combined sewer overflows than any other municipality in Ontario so far in 2009. London discharges sewage, treated or otherwise, directly into the Thames River. Downstream, the city of Chatham is complaining.

London is looking for the best way to resolve the situation without tearing up busy city streets and disrupting traffic and businesses, says Tom Copeland, division manager for Wastewater and Drainage Engineering at City of London.

A pilot project is being conducted in the relatively small Vauxhall treatment plant sewage area to determine why bypasses at plants and pumping stations occur and the best way to prevent them. Copeland points out that the city of Chicago has all combined storm and sanitary sewers. Overflows are held back in "huge" tunnels until the water can be treated.

There are also new technologies called "rapid treatment," which quickly treats diluted flows so that they can be safely discharged to the river.

"I question whether reducing the bypasses is the best use of taxpayers dollars," Copeland says. "We won't know that until we look at the whole watershed and where the trouble spots are."

London has dealt with flooding in January 2008 and again in April, Copeland says. Bypasses also occurred after Boxing Day in 2008 and again in mid-February, when it was severe enough that some city streets were closed as the river overflowed.

In the Feb. 15 event, 413,000 cubic metres of sewage bypassed treatment. Bypassed sewage was one fifth of one per cent of the total river flow of 231 million cubic metres.

"It is important to put that into context," notes Copeland. "We are only bypassing to protect people's basements. If we don't bypass we have to put that flow somewhere."

London can't clean up the Thames River by itself, Copeland asserts. If the city is going to make serious gains (in water quality in the Thames), it has to get the whole watershed involved to make that happen."

Nutrient management, milk house waste treatment and keeping cattle out of streams may be a better use of money, he says, pointing to the rural areas around London. "There are a huge number of issues."

Not everyone shares Copeland's point of view. London "needs to build a new plant," Goderich mayor Shewfelt says. BF