City plans $15-million upgrade to northside facility
Published Saturday July 4th, 2009
Fredericton's sewage treatment plant on the north side is poised for a $15-million leap forward.
The facility, built in 1969 to service the four major communities which ultimately amalgamated into the City of Fredericton in 1973, is the largest sewage treatment plant in New Brunswick.
Over the years, the Fredericton Area Pollution Control Commission, which runs the plant, has taken steps to make sure it keeps up with the environmental times.
Unlike many communities along the St. John River, Fredericton doesn't dump raw sewage into the river.
The commission is planning an 18-month project to upgrade a sewage lift station, build an aeration basin, a secondary clarifier, an aerated sludge holding tank and gravity thickener, expand its UV disinfection system and building improvements.
Work is slated to start this summer once the commission receives clearance from the provincial government under the Clean Environment Act.
Commission manager Dan Harvey said the environmental impact assessment for the project has been registered with the province and the public has until July 20 to visit commission offices on Barker Street to view the documents and make comments.
"Since the late '60s, we've gone through a number of upgrades as the population has grown. As different requirements have come about for treatment, we've continuously upgraded the facility," Harvey said. "Now we're looking to make some final upgrades to get us looking forward for the next 25 years."
For the sewage treatment plant's neighbours, much of the upgrades to different sewage processing units will be unseen. A lot of the equipment will be installed underground to avoid more sprawl over the site.
"Once these units are all in place - they're actually all below ground structures - if you look at the place after we're completed, you really won't see much difference," Harvey said.
"(We'll) stay within the existing fence line. We have additional property that we own, but we're not using that for this.
"It's going to give us some additional flow capacity and some additional redundancy if we want to take equipment out of service for general maintenance."
The work will also make the facility compliant with upcoming regulatory changes proposed through the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment.
"We know there's new guidelines coming in the next couple of years, so we're positioning ourselves for that," he said.
The treatment plant upgrade will plan to handle additional sewage loads, as the city's population grows and housing is added over the next 25 years.
"There's 100 per cent treatment here in Fredericton and we are the biggest secondary treatment plant in the province," Harvey said.
The plant deals with 90 per cent of the city's sewage treatment needs. On the south side of the St. John River, the City of Fredericton operates two smaller sewage treatment lagoons, which handle the remaining loads.
"Some flow goes to those two facilities," Harvey said.
As the city installs new sewer lines, it's working to make those systems tighter, reducing surcharge and extra water flows into the system.
"When that happens, we see less flows," Harvey said.
"The population will increase and we'll see some (increased) flows. At the same time, the city will be renewing infrastructure and on particular streets we'll see less flows because there's less chance for infiltration."
In an earlier federal-provincial funding announcement for a complementary project, Fredericton MP Keith Ashfield brought $458,000 from Ottawa to replace a sewage lift station.
The funding will be matched by the provincial Environment Department and the city for a total of $1.4 million.
The sewage lift plant is at capacity and is becoming less reliable as it ages, city officials have said. That lift station is located behind the former Canadian Tire building, just off Main Street.
City council recently approved a resolution to ink the final contract with the province to get that project into construction this year.
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