Sewage Treatment
An update and proposed next steps
Clarifications
• Committee will tonight make a
recommendation to Council
• Council will consider on Monday 14th July
• No option to avoid sewage treatment
• Taxpayers will have to pay
• Decision is how we get there
• How does that affect costs?
What this presentation covers
• A progress update on the CRRC
• A review of the Dockside Green system
• An account of the visit to the Sechelt Water
Resource Recovery Centre
• A review of the current state of the CRD Seaterra
Program, and
• An outline of how the City can manage the
process to get to a completed sewage treatment
plant including the engagement of the Project
Advisory Team.
Progress
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
CRD conditional permission
Public info open house – 79% support
Compiled flowchart of MWR requirements
Report on Dockside Green
Discussion with Minister of Environment
Discussions with Westside Mayors
Visit to Sechelt
RFP for EIS
Dockside Green
The sewage effluent
The bakery and coffee shop
Dockside Green 1
• One of the first in BC to produce high quality
effluent for re-use
• Therefore close scrutiny by CRD, MOE, Victoria
• The most restrictive limits of any in BC (5 BOD
and 10 TSS)
• Actual results almost always below detection
• CRD plant will be limited to 25 and 25
Dockside Green 2
•
•
•
•
Limit of coliform for DSG is 2.2 CFU/100 ml
Only once exceeded detection limit
That reading was 1 CFU/100 ml
At disinfection NTU must be less than 2 ave.
and 5 max.
• Actual is about 0.25
• Turbidity spikes
Dockside Green 3
• First year 14 non-compliance issues (13,000
tests)
• Second year 11
• Third review 4
• Early problems common place first 2 yrs
• DSG able to fix rapidly due to good technology
Dockside Green 4
• In summary the latest MOE Inspection Report (9482) from
April 30, 2013 found 4 issues of non-compliance. Two of
these alleged non-compliances were errors in interpreting
the OC by MOE staff, one was an unjustifiable requirement
in the OC which is not supported by MOE’s own regulation,
and one was a minor administrative issue in the process of
being rectified at the time of the inspection. The two OC
interpretation errors by MOE staff were the only alleged
non-compliances relating to the effluent and plant
performance.
• In other words in 2012 the DSG discharge was in full
compliance with OC effluent quality limits and the same
appears to be true of 2013 (Table 1).
Visit to Sechelt
Plant can serve 14,000 pop. equiv.
$25 million
Cost of capital plus maintenance
~ $375 per user per year
Excellent process – beautiful result!
Sechelt plant on our site
Best guide to costs we have?
Sechelt
CRD for Colwood
Colwood
Design flow
4 Ml/day
4.7 Ml/day
4 Ml/day
Gross cost
$25 million
$36 million
$25 million?
Grants
55%
63%
50%?
Net cost
$11.25 million
$13.3 million
$12.5 million?
Cost to inc.
capacity to
8 Ml/day
Low (millions)
High (tens of millions)
Low (millions)
CRD project - Seaterra
• Esquimalt created a legal environment where
the Minister cannot overule them.
• The McLoughlin site is no longer available for
the project that CRD has received bids on.
• CRD is reviewing their options but there is no
plan B currently
• They are predicting higher costs and the
possibility of missing the deadline
What can Colwood do
• The four Mayors of the Westside
municipalities are meeting
• Sechelt shows tertiary can be better, cheaper,
faster
• Distributed = control our destiny, future
revenues, local contractors, local stimulus, pay
ourselves not CRD, certainty, faster results
• CRD has approved subject to conditions
Next steps
• Move forward decisively and quickly
• Avoid fines, avoid further costs of central plant
• Requesting instruction to prepare contract for
Aqua-tex – avoid delays – uniquely qualified
• All other work (99%) to be awarded by
competition
• Use Sechelt process
The team to get it done
•
•
•
•
•
•
Project Advisory Team
Local Advisory Committee(s)
Owner’s Technical Consultant
Project Managers
Misc advisors on legal and financial
Design\Build group
Financial
• $20,000 spent so far
• $350,000 budgeted till April 2015 – gas tax
• $1 million max by April 2016 – gas tax plus
property taxes plus borrowing?
• In 2016\2017 plant constructed
• Tonight’s recommendation involves $139,000
Project Advisory Team
• Currently Aqua-Tex Scientific
• Operating on small purchase orders pending
outcome of McLoughlin
• Need a longer contract to move forward
• Council policy requires RFP – may be waived
• Staff recommending waiving in this instance
• Keep Aqua-Tex on the job
• RFP for everything else (99%)
Aqua-tex
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Understand the MoE’s regulations
Truly independent of CRD
Long service to Colwood’s interests
Talented team with the right connections
Very capable with grants
Diversity in the team
International experience = exposure to many
different technologies and ideas
• Truly innovative
Aqua-tex
• Retired Deputy Minister
• Retired Environmental Impact Assessment
Biologist with MoE
• Ecological consultants – R.P. Bio
• History of win-win designs for developers
• IRM study for the Province, Colwood and North
Shore
• Dockside Green (amendment of LWMP)
• Vancouver Olympic Village, Vancouver Island Tech
Park and British Pacific Properties
Options
• Engage Aqua-Tex Scientific as the Project Advisory Team for
Colwood’s sewage treatment plant and enter into a
contract for this work ending with the completion of the
pre-registration meeting with the Ministry of the
Environment.
• Instruct staff to continue working with Aqua-Tex Scientific
until an RFP process can be undertaken for the selection of
a Project Advisory Team.
• Instruct staff to suspend work on the Resource Recovery
Centre until more is known about the CRD’s intentions.
Recommendation
That Council instruct staff to prepare a
contract for Aqua-Tex Scientific in the
amount of $139,000, with funds coming
from Gas Tax, to be the Project Advisory
Team for the Colwood Resource Recovery
Centre, subject to all other expenditures
on this project being under current City
policies for procurement, and subject to a
review and approval of the draft contract
by Council.