Plan to treat Holland Marsh fertilizer runoff stalled

Hints the province will shelve a $715 million Upper York Sewage Solution (UYSS) has cast a shadow over the $40 million storm water capture and treatment plant just announced with federal funding for Holland Marsh. The irony is that both projects have the same goal, to reduce phosphorous run off from fertilizers used in the lush agricultural lands of Holland Marsh polluting Lake Simcoe. For decades the run off of phosphorus from fertilizer used on farms around Lake Simcoe and Holland Marsh has created headaches in the area. Last November the federal government made a breathless announcement of a $16 million through the Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF) and York Region was expected to divert $24 million to the project as part of the overall phosphorous elimination commitment related to the UYSS. “The Holland Marsh is a 25 square kilometre agricultural area but the runoff from fertilizers enters into the canals and then the Holland River which drains into Lake Simcoe,” says Mike Rabeau, York’s Director of Capital Planning and Delivery for Environmental Services. The upshot is that there’s an abundance of phosphate in the water and in turn spurs too much plant growth which sucks up all the oxygen in the water, depriving other plants and wildlife like fish necessary to maintain a healthy water way. He says for years the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority has calculated about six tonnes of phosphorus are pouring into the lake and putting the entire Lake Simcoe Watershed at risk of eutrophication — the process of oxygen deprivation.

In December Georgina Council, citing concerns from Georgina Island First Nation over what they claim is “inadequate consultation,” voted against the project. It would provide water treatment for 150,000 new homes in the area but Georgina also isn’t happy with the provincial growth targets the area and this is one way to put the brakes on those plans. York has already spent $100 million on studies and assessments but opponents want York to dump their problem down a southern pipeline to Durham Region’s Duffin Creek plant which flushes into Lake Ontario. That was the original plan but the UYSS project had originally come about when the province insisted that York need to find a local solution to a local problem.

“Normally this is not part of our business,” he says, “we would not be involved but because we are a waste water and water treatment business.”

It happens anywhere there are large bodies of water surrounded by farming, he says, and is called non-point source contamination.

“It’s not coming from an outfall so you can’t single it out as the source of the pollution,” he says, and the agricultural operations are too important in terms of jobs and food to shut down.

“It’s not coming from an outfall so you can’t single it out as the source of the pollution,”

Mike Rabeau York Region

“We get some bad press but we have done all we can do,”

Mike Rabeau York Region

York environmental services was peripherally involved in some of the discussions over the years because at one time it was thought that their treatment plants were a significant source of phosphorous being discharged into the lake.

However, he says, over the years many upgrades and adjustments have been made the plants discharge less than three per cent of the phosphorous going into the watershed.

“We get some bad press but we have done all we can do,” he says and notes in 2014 York proposed the Upper York Sewage Solutions which would be the first municipality in Canada to adopt leading-edge microfiltration and reverse-osmosis wastewater treatment technology with purified, clean water going into the East Holland River.

The plan is to build a Water Reclamation Centre in the Town of East Gwillimbury and implement at a Total Phosphorus Off-setting Program to further remove phosphorus from other sources within the Lake Simcoe watershed by retrofitting several existing stormwater with low-impact development technologies to remove three kilograms of phosphorus for every one kilogram of additional phosphorus the Water Reclamation Centre discharges to the watershed above a threshold of 124 kilograms per year.

That apparently isn’t good opponents in York Region. UYSS has been waiting since 2014 for approval with funding in place and some of that funding was going to pay for the storm water capture and treatment plant, says Rabeau. However, that project can’t proceed until the UYSS fate is decided. If it is killed the province needs to permit diversion of those funds for the storm water run off plan.

Engineering for the storm water facility hasn’t been done but in general terms it would be divert water from the canal to settling ponds where chemical treatment would extract phosphorous to be resold commercially.

It’s a Catch-22 situation for York Region which is now waiting to see which way that decision goes and is no further ahead than it has been since 2014.

The Region of Waterloo is reducing its environment footprint with a project intended to decrease electrical costs at its three largest wastewater treatment plants.

While the complications created by the global pandemic have set the construction timetable back by four to six months, a $24.1-million project to install cogeneration units at the Kitchener, Galt, and Waterloo plants is now in its final stages, with commissioning expected in the next few months.

Jacobs Engineering Group is the consultant overseeing the design and construction of the systems and W.A. Stephenson Mechanical Contractors Ltd. is the general contractor.

Comprised of pre-fabricated combined heat and power (CHP) engines, air, gas, and selective ccatalytic reduction systems, switchgear, and other components supplied by European and American manufacturers, the units will be fueled by biogas, a waste product expelled during the treatment process, says the region’s manager of engineering and wastewater programs, Trevor Brown.

The gas conditioning systems will remove compounds from the biogas, like moisture and chemicals, to help prevent premature wear and tear on the engines, he says.

Although some connections are still required, an 800 kilowatt engine has been installed in Kitchener, which is the Region’s largest wastewater treatment plant, with 600 kilowatt engines each at Galt and Waterloo. The engines and supporting equipment are housed within noise-dampening containers, while onsite assembly was required for the gas conditioning systems.

The project has required civil engineering site work, electrical connections and the pouring of the concrete pads the units sit on.

But that work has not impacted the plants’ day-to-day plant operations, outside of short durations to make connections to the existing infrastructure. “Cogeneration is a process enhancement,” he explains. The units will provide supplementary electricity to power the plants at a lower cost than is available from local electrical utilities, as well as reducing their reliance on those conventional supply systems. Another major benefit is that the heat generated from the engines will be used to preheat the digesters system which has to be heated to 35 C to maintain its effectiveness, he says. “Anything that can be done to offset the heating requirements is an operational savings.” Combined, the three biogas cogeneration facilities will produce about 12,000 megawattof electricity every year, which is the amount of electricity used by 1,200 houses per year.

They will also reduce the Region’s greenhouse gas emissions by about 550 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, equivalent to taking around 115 cars off the road, he says.

In explaining why the region embarked on the project, Brown points out that wastewater treatment is a high energy user and hydro costs is “one of the biggest line items” in its operating budgets.

Annually, those costs are in the $5 million range with the Kitchener, Waterloo, and Galt plants accounting for about 75 per cent of that figure, he says.

Once the units are fully operational, they will provide an immediate return on the plants’ operating expenses in the form of reduced electrical rates. The payback on the capital investment will take between nine to 11 years, says Brown.

Planning began in 2015 with detailed engineering studies which determined the feasibility of the project, examining issues such as the sizing of the units, potential electrical savings and associate costs. Preliminary design began in the spring of 2016, with detailed design getting underway the following year.

Construction commenced in early 2019 and “continued smoothly” until mid-March of last year when the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown threw up more than a few hurdles.

New safety measures had to be quickly implemented, such as physical distancing, masking, and wellness screening, which did have an impact on scheduling and coordination of on-site contractors, which in turn has had an impact on the overall project schedule.

Early on in the pandemic, the general contractor encountered shortages in the availability of labour, materials, equipment, such as personal protection equipment.

And, with implementation of travel restrictions, border closures, and mandatory 14-day quarantine requirements, it has become difficult to arrange site visits from the suppliers to conduct the pre-commissioning and commissioning. The suppliers include 2G, the German manufacturer of the CHP engines and BioSpark, the American manufacturer of the catalytic reduction systems.

“We have has some success in getting these experts to site for this essential work. However, this continues to be an ongoing challenge.”

Asked about the technology, Brown explains that harnessing biogas to produce both electricity and heat is not new and it is being used around the globe, mostly at large facilities due to economies of scale.

“There are wastewater facilities in the world that are now operating 100 per cent off the electrical grid and generate all the electricity they need for their operations.”