Engineering design to begin on Sydney harbour sewage cleanup

A project to stop raw sewage from flowing into part of Sydney harbour is going to get underway this summer, three years after it was first announced.

Cape Breton Regional Municipality is hiringan engineering design consultantfor what is called the Sydney Harbour West project, which was approved in June 2015.

The estimated $58-million cost is being split equally by the municipality and the provincial and federal governments, said Matt Viva, CBRM's manager of wastewater operations.

The work will include building collector lines and a new sewage treatment plant in Sydport Industrial Park for waste flowing from homes and businesses inSydney River, Westmount,Coxheath andthe industrial park.

Viva said the project was approved three years agobut was put on hold by the municipality because of the cost.

"Part of the delay since 2015and part of council's concern wasthat at the time, there were more federal funding programs being issued by the government of Canada. One of them had a more attractive cost-share, which was 50 per cent federal, 25 per cent provincial and 25 per cent municipal," he said.

"The hope was to get this project to fall under that funding formula and make it a little easier on CBRM's end. But we were unsuccessfulso the project will continue as a third, a third, a third."

The work was also delayed over budget concernsbecause a new treatment plant could cost millions of dollars to operate.

Viva said the design consultant will be expected to keep the project within the originally estimated capital cost and will be expected to include energy-saving features that will keep the operating costs down.

Construction should start in about two years, he said.

Municipal wastewater treatment systems are ranked depending on the severity of their pollution effects. The Sydney Harbour West project is in the medium category, and has to be completed by 2030, said Viva.

"Municipal wastewater effluent is a serious problem from coast to coast, actually," he said.

"It's a national problem. In fact, municipal wastewater effluent is the highest source of pollution to receiving waters in Canada. Within Sydney harbour, we're not aware of any deleterious effects on aquatic life or anything like that."

The municipality completed a sewage collection and treatment system on the east side of the harbour in 2014. Once the west project is done, Viva said CBRM will have to work on the lower-risk problems in the harbour from raw sewage outfalls in North Sydney, Sydney Mines and New Victoria.

Complicated endeavour

The municipality also has several other communities that need wastewater upgrades to eliminate raw sewage from going into the ocean.

Viva said most of the work on the Sydney Harbour West project will be done in the area between the Dobson Yacht Club and the industrial park. But it is complicated by two inlets, so some of the work will run along the shore, but lift stations will also have to be added to move sewage uphill and around the inlets to get to the treatment plant.

"It could be dangerous working below sea level adjacent to the harbour, so it's certainly not an easy fix," he said. "It's a multi-year endeavour that will be complicated, but I think we'll be all right."

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