Concern grows over Winnipeg's sewage capacity as city and outlying areas grow

Senior staff at Winnipeg's water and waste department are cautioningit's time to carefully monitor dealsallowing municipalitiesoutside the Perimeter Highway to access the city's sewage treatment facilities.

The warning comes as thecity nears its capacity to manage the extra effluent in the next few years.

The committee overseeing the department isrecommendingcity council review any new service sharing agreementsfor accepting and treating sewage from communities outside Winnipeg until the city has fully completed$1.8 billion in upgrades to its North End Sewage Treatment Plant.

Staff say dwindling treatment capacity couldalso impact developments inside city limits, until the city completes a massive overhaul of its ability to treat sewage.

An interim solution is expected to be in place by2022, but it would not meet long-term provincial requirements for the environmental licence under whichthe treatment plant operates.

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"We mayhave to slow down residential or industrial development in the city because we are, somewhere between five and nine years from now, going to hit our limit for what we can take into the sewage system," said water and waste chair Brian Mayes.

City staff estimate the additional treatment capacity over the next few years to be approximately the equivalent to the addition of 90,000 new residents to Winnipeg.

Councillors were told thecombinations ofresidential growth within Winnipeg and theindustrial, commercial and residential development in surrounding municipalities will all have an impact on capacityof the city's sewage treatment system.

The estimate to complete all the upgrades for the North End plant is approximately eight years, but funding sources for the various stages of the project have not been hammered out between the three levels of government.

Coun. John Orlikow(River Heights-Fort Garry) isn't convinced the city has the capacity to meet growth inside and outside the perimeter and treat everyone's sewage before the plant upgrades are in place.

"I could be wrong [but] I don't see it. The stuff (residential, commercial and industrial expansion) that's in the pipeline already going in and the stuff we don't know about; I'm quite concerned we are going to have the capacity," Orlikow said during a meeting on Monday.

Moira Geer, the director of the water and waste department, acknowledged the city "has never reserved capacity" in its sewage treatment system for any type of commercial or residential growthit has been a system of "who's up first," for connecting theirdevelopments.

"I'm a little nervous about that," Orlikow responded, adding he's worriedit could put massive investments in residential development in the city of Winnipeg in jeopardy.

Outlying municipalities paying attention

The capacity issue is beginning to raiseeyebrows at some of those municipalities outside the Perimeter Highway.

The Rural Municipality of Rossersignedan agreement with the city in 2014 to provide treatment capacity for11,000 acres ofexisting and new developmentsinside CentrePort, anindustrial park and inland port being developed and promoted by the provincial and federal governments.

Limited sewage treatment capacity could impact how the RM and CentrePortstructure growth in thenext few years.

The RM of St. Andrews doesn't have a signedagreement for taking on sewage from a waste water project toservice approximately 1,800 homes in the area, althoughit does have a memorandum of understanding with the city andthe RM of West St. Paul.

The federal and provincial governments and the two municipalities have already spent most of a$46.5 million budget preparing various systems in those communities for connection to Winnipeg's treatment facilities.

Councillors on the water and waste committee amended the motion to get council oversight on any future service agreements to reflect the need to limit capacity in the next few years.

They also acknowledged the need to move an firm agreement with the RM of St. Andrews, but to limit how much sewage the community can send Winnipeg's way over the short term.

"We did sign a memorandum of understanding with them [and] they did get federal and provincial money. They did put pipes in the ground. We should finish this off, [but] we shouldn't give them an unlimited access," Mayes told reporters after the meeting.