A recently released environmental impact study on the outfall from Powell River’s new wastewater treatment plant into Malaspina Strait confirms the Townsite location is the best place for the new facility, according to an 80-page report submitted in April by City of Powell River project consultants Associated Engineering.
Currently, the city discharges wastewater effluent into the strait from three separate outfalls: Wildwood, Townsite and Westview. The reason for the project, which has taken about 20 years for successive councils to arrive at decision on, is because the three plants are not all providing adequate treatment before discharging into Malaspina Strait.
The Westview plant cannot treat all of the area’s flows, especially during wet weather, according to city director of infrastructure Tor Birtig.
Birtig said there is no means to collect the biosolids from the Townsite area, so it ends up going out into the strait. With the Wildwood lagoon, although it is treated, standards for the lagoon are much lower than what is required for federal and provincial regulations, he added.
The new plant, the largest infrastructure project in the city’s history at a cost of approximately $30 million, will convey and consolidate flows from those three plants to the site of the new Townsite facility.
The outfall pipe will run through the foreshore and intertidal zones before terminating in marine waters at a depth of approximately 50 metres below average water levels and terminate approximately 700 metres from shore, which is 100 metres beyond the current discharge.
“The discharge into the marine environment at that location is really quite ideal in terms of the way the regulations want to see discharge reintroduced into the environment in a safe way,” said AE project consultant Tom Robinson. “It's a well-flushed environment. It's an open environment and we have ideal conditions for doing that.”
Quality guides are required for any water treatment and environment modelling shows that with the new plant, water quality standards have been met and exceeded in some cases, according to AE senior environmental scientist Rob Hoogendoorn.
“What we're saying in the report is there's no impact of this wastewater facility that has a significant change to the historic conditions,” said Hoogendoorn. “When it comes to recreational activities the improvement would be related to improvements in overall water quality that we've addressed; with an improvement in water quality comes an improvement in recreational use.”
Robinson added that there are multiple layers to protecting the public, including effluent disinfectant and diffusing, and the modelling confirms the released flow mixes, stays at depth and does not contact the public.
“The effluent will not rise to the surface,” said Robinson. “That's what the modelling effort confirms.”
Meanwhile, two new options for the exterior design of the new facility will be released on May 1 and the city will be asking for public input over a two-week period. An online survey will be available, followed by a public open house on May 10. Details will be sent to residents by mail and posted on the city’s website and social media platforms.
