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A city manager says he hopes construction will begin as early as next spring on an addition to Ottawa’s wastewater treatment plant that will remove chlorine from treated wastewater before it is discharged into the environment.
Municipal procurement officials were in the process last week of selecting a consultant to design the new de-chlorination facility, which the city requires in order to meet pending environmental regulations, says Michel Chevalier, the city’s manager of wastewater and drainage operations.
He adds there will be a separate procurement process for a general contractor to construct the actual building once designs are finalized.
The city presently uses sodium hypochlorite at the R.O. Pickard Environmental Centre in east Gloucester to kill bacteria and disinfect wastewater before it is discharged into the Ottawa River, explains Mr. Chevalier.
The city’s chlorination facilities currently consist of a small building, about the size of a house, containing chemical tanks and pumps, as well as three large contact “channels” that are approximately 100 meters wide and 30 metres deep, says Mr. Chevalier.
While the consultant will determine the design of de-chlorination facility, one option is to duplicate the footprint of the current disinfection operation.
“In the worst case scenario, we need another chemical building and we need another set of contact tanks,” says Mr. Chevalier.
“If we proceed with this system, it is estimated it is going to take $7 million, give or take.”
Mr. Chevalier says the city of Ottawa is one of the few North American utilities conducting impact environmental monitoring on living creatures in the river. He says studies have shown the wastewater treatment plant has no impact on living creatures 1.8 kilometres downstream, but that one type of clam has shown signs of distress when it gets within 300 metres of the plant.
Mr. Chevalier says he does not believe it is chlorine causing the distress in the fingernail clam, but notes it still makes sense to invest in the de-chlorination facility.
“We know chlorine is not good on the environment.”
The R.O. Pickard plant discharges approximately 450,000 cubic metres of treated wastewater daily.