5 hours ago
Swift News
Metro Vancouver has announced it will downsize plans for upgrading the Iona Island wastewater treatment plant — a new approach that is expected to be $4 billion cheaper in the short term.
The original plan was a full re-build of the sewage treatment plant with a budget of almost $10 billion.
The new $6-billion plan is to upgrade the existing facility in phases to comply with provincial and federal regulations for "secondary-level" treatment, which removes up to 90 per cent or more of pollutants typically found in wastewater, such as small suspended solids, according to Metro Van.
The Iona Island plant, located in Richmond, B.C., is currently only a "primary treatment" facility that removes materials that float or settle out by gravity and removes about half of dissolved organic materials.
Metro Vancouver Regional District chief administrative officer Jerry Dobrovolny said the phased approach will cost more over time to fully upgrade the facility, as the prices of materials and labour rise, but that it was necessary to spread the spending out.
Otherwise, he said, the cost is "too big of a lift, and the impact on our budgets for the next 15 years are just too dramatic."
Board directors on Friday also voted to use a treatment technology that Dobrovolny hailed as particularly flexible.
The "membrane bioreactor technology" uses modules that are installed in cells, according to Dobrovolny, allowing staff to react to real conditions.
"If population speeds up, and is going faster, we add some more cells to be compliant. If population slows down, we may have opportunities to save."
