Ontario's ongoing battle against sewage bypasses
Monday, October 3, 2011
The province is throwing money at Ontario's sagging sewage treatment plants, but some towns, like Tavistock, have to bear the cost alone
by DON STONEMAN
Getting bypasses from sewage treatment systems under control takes money. Just ask the officials in charge of systems in the town of Hawkesbury, on the Ottawa River, east of Canada's capital, and Tavistock, a village on the Thames River north of Woodstock, in western Ontario.
Hawkesbury (pop. 11,000) broke ground June 20 on a $35 million wastewater treatment plant renovation. The town must finance one third of the cost. The province's ministry of infrastructure will pay nearly $12 million, about one third. The federal government will pay the other third. In recent years the town "had to make do with what we had" until the grant money was secured and the project started, chief administrative officer Nourmand Beaulieu says. About $1.8 billion in infrastructure monies is being aimed at community and environmental projects, according to the provincial ministry's website.
Contrast that with the situation in Tavistock (population a bit less than 2,600), where a lagoon system expansion will be finished later this fall. Substantial and costly updates to sewers are also involved. In this case, "the customers, present and future, will pay," says Rob Walton, director of public works for the County of Oxford.
The town's $6 million lagoon bill will be paid for by development charges for new homes and expanding businesses, current ratepayers, dipping into financial reserves and a cost-sharing agreement with a large customer, a Saputo cheese factory. There's nothing there from provincial or federal governments because the Tavistock project didn't fit the criteria for infrastructure grants, says Walton. Nor was it a "county priority."
Walton says that "the (infrastructure) programs were not well set up to deal with projects like this." Projects that were "shovel-ready but not in your budget," got the nod. In some cases, he says, there was 10 days notice to make an application. Work towards an expanded Tavistock lagoon started in 2002, took years to develop and involved a property expropriation and a provincially-mandated class environmental assessment for public involvement.
As for "county priorities," Walton says Oxford got grants to rebuild a bridge in Ingersoll and roads around the new Toyota plant in Woodstock. It also received $22 million to cover part of a required $38 million water system upgrade in the county after the Walkerton tainted water tragedy in 2000. Walton says the county was fortunate to get that money.
Hawkesbury's chief administrative officer, Nourmand Beaulieu, says the frequency of bypasses was "a major reason we are doing the changes. Our problem was when we had a big rain. Some storm sewers in town were coming into the sanitary sewers. That was the reason for the bypass into the river," says Beaulieu. Untreated effluent flows past other communities on the Ottawa River on its way to Montreal.
Beaulieu says the provincial Ministry of Environment (MOE) rode Hawkesbury hard to make it clean up its act. "First of all, the town had no plan. Second, the capacity was coming to 90 per cent," Beaulieu says. "The ministry got upset. The last three years we have been working with them very closely. They are very satisfied with what we are going to do."
Construction on the renovated plant is started and should end in early 2013.
A bypass occurs when the capacity of a mechanical sewage treatment plant is overcome by a large volume of water during a rain storm or a snow melt. Unless the plant releases untreated sewage into an outlet, it will back up into residents' homes.
Even the heaviest rainfall won't cause Tavistock's lagoons to overflow, Walton says. The old system was flushed out in the non-freezing winter months. Bypasses have occurred at Tavistock's two pumping stations and that has happened on a number of occasions, the worst being in 2006 when residents recorded more than six inches of rainfall in a short period of time. Basements were flooded.
A third pumping station is being built this fall and new sewers were being installed on major streets. Tavistock's main intersection was under construction this fall to put in a new sanitary sewer and more development is expected.
Traditional flows from the Tavistock lagoons in Horner Drain and then into the Thames River were done over the winter. "We've had to have out-of-season discharges because we had run out of capacity," Walton allows.
Putting out 'good effluent'
With the new sand filters, Tavistock's lagoons will be changing their discharge regimen. Effluent will be discharged during the non-freezing months through the sand filters "with a higher degree of treatment" Walton says. All of the environment ministry's criteria will be met. Similar sand filter systems set up in Norwich in 1996 and a season-old system in Plattsville are working as planned.
The Tavistock lagoon will be discharging from March through to the end of November and that will increase the flow in the creek in the summer months, says Walton. "We will be putting out quite good effluent," he says.
The expanded lagoons will cover about 20 acres. The county expropriated 79 acres to provide a buffer zone as well. Parts of it will be farmed, he says.
The water quality is actually improving on the drain and river that takes the effluent from Tavistock's sewage lagoons, says Jeff Brick, co-ordinator of hydrology and regulatory services for the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority (UTRCA) in London.
Brick bases his assertion on the most recently published "report card" on the sub-basin, published on the conservation authority's website in 2007. (A new report will be published in December or January.)
The Thames River and its tributaries flowing past Tavistock constitute one of 28 sub-watersheds feeding into the Thames River system as a whole. According to the most recent "report cards" based on E. coli and phosphorus readings and water flow, the health of the stream flowing past Tavistock is improving.
Marine life is also monitored by counting the number and type of bethnic invertebrates present. Benthic invertebrates are species such as mayflies, stoneflies and caddisflies which are sensitive to pollution. Others are insensitive. The ratio of sensitive to insensitive species is an indication of the health of a stream.
"The assessment of marine life is realistic," Brick says. "This is not northern Ontario . . . We are talking about a working landscape." Of the land uses upstream from the test sites, 80 per cent is agricultural, 13 per cent is forest, six per cent is urban and one per cent is water cover. The water flow ends up in the Pittock reservoir at Woodstock. "In the context of the overall Thames watershed, this catchment area is above average," Brick says. "This is an indication that the work that is being done is getting results."
Farmers and other rural residents are able to take advantage of clean water grants to help them build milk house wash water cleaning facilities, manure storages and even fuel storages.
The county of Oxford helps fund these projects, Brick adds.
Population and climate change
The province's urban population is growing, and its municipally-run infrastructure for handling waste water is aging, says Paul Gerard, spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Infrastructure.
"Climate change will also have a significant impact on storm-water systems and will also create pressures on drinking water sources and waste-water systems," the same spokesperson writes.
Never was that as clear as in the spring of 2011, according to statistics compiled by the Ontario Ministry of Environment's Spills Action Centre (SAC).
In the first six months of 2011, Ontario sewage treatment plant operators, municipal and private, reported that, because of storm or melt-water situations, they had to "bypass" treatment and dump sewage directly into outlet rivers and lakes on 933 occasions.
That compares to 356 such occurrences in the first half of 2010 and 758 instances in that entire calendar year. MOE spokesperson Kate Jordan says there were an unusually low number of bypasses in 2010. In 2009, for example, the SAC reported 1,273 instances of bypasses.
Sewage treatment plants operate with a certificate of approval issued by the MOE. That certificate requires that waste-water treatment plants, municipal and private, report sewage spills and bypasses to the SAC. A bypass occurs when a storm or melt water overwhelms a sewage treatment plant's wastewater treatment capacity. The operator may be charged under the Ontario Water Resources Act for failing to report a bypass or a sewage spill. (Farmers are similarly required to report when manure or other farm effluent is released, usually because a fish kill results.)
The province of Ontario is engaged in upgrading the sagging sewage treatment plants of the province by throwing dollars at them. Ontario's long-term infrastructure plan, called Building Together, includes strategies to address Ontario's water and waste-water infrastructure needs, says the Ministry of Infrastructure.
The province has already committed almost $1.7 billion in loans to municipal water infrastructure and there are new requirements under the Water Opportunities Act of 2010.
The first two of the Ontario Small Waterworks Assistance Programs (OSWAP) have provided $20 million on operating funds to help 166 smaller communities "with limited fiscal capabilities." The OSWAP-3 has been expanded to $50 million from $20 million to fund both water and waste-water projects. The province recently announced 85 water and waste-water projects that were successfully funded.
The funding is to help communities fix leaking pipes and launch projects to improve efficiency. The province plans to spend $170 million in 2011-2012. Most projects are funded on a one-third provincial, one-third federal, one-third local basis.
"The province is working with municipalities to ensure funding is in place to upgrade sewage treatment plants and ensure all plants are operating at a minimum of secondary treatment. This level is for the treatment the system provides under normal operating conditions, day in and day out.
"In the case of a bypass, municipalities endeavour to ensure any materials being bypassed from the plant have received at least a primary level of treatment. But in certain cases, like severe rains and storms, this is not always possible," says MOE spokesperson Kate Jordan. BF