CBRM outlines wastewater plans
Residents say small pipes causing sewer backups
Mike Boudreau of Coxheath is concerned about the state of the sewer system along Hillcrest Drive.
“I’ve been there, all told, about 55 years. We have the same situation as what is happening on Leeside Drive and Braemar Drive,” Boudreau said Sunday during the Cape Breton Regional Municipality’s presentation on plans for a new wastewater treatment plant.
The presentation was on the Sydney harbour west wastewater collection and treatment project.
It aims to fix current sewer and storm drainage problems for residents in Westmount, Coxheath and Sydney River and build the new facility.
Boudreau and many others said sewer pipes are too small to deal with sewer and storm water flow, which results in frequent sewer backups.
Clarence Seward has lived on Leeside Drive in Coxheath for 42 years and has built and sold homes on the street. He said many homes on the street have sewage backups, usually due to heavy rainfall.
“I know one family who had their sewage back up four times. Do you know what that does to a family? They ended up fixing it after the last time and moving,” he said.
“You can’t ever clean it up — even after a year you can still smell it. You have to paint the whole house.”
Roughly 7,000 residents will be on the new system, which will clean water before dumping it into the harbour. The plan will eliminate the three outfalls that currently dump raw sewage into the waterway.
Matt Viva, CBRM manager of wastewater operations, explained the stages of the sevenyear, $58-million plan to the audience. Funding for the project, which is shared equally between the federal, provincial and municipal governments, was approved in June 2015.
“Exact location for the new plant isn’t determined. At this time we are looking at putting it on a piece of land just passed the Sydport Industrial Park, which is owned by the CBRM,” he said.
The first stage of the project starts this summer.
It will be an investigation of the current sewer and storm drainage systems in the areas that will run to the new treatment facility.
“We will determine the size of the pipes, determine how much life is in it and if it needs to be replaced,” Viva said.
Any problem areas or broken pipes will be fixed and upgraded to keep storm water out of sewage systems and reduce the amount of wastewater flowing into the new treatment facility.
Plans are to build a facility that allows for extra tanks to be added if the population in the area increases.
The federal government has given municipalities across the country deadlines to stop dumping raw sewage into waterways.
For Sydney harbour west, the deadline is 2030 but the CBRM hopes to have it completed in 2025.
Viva said the next focus will be Glace Bay, which has a deadline of 2020 and an estimated cost of $60 million.
It is estimated the total cost to upgrade all of the CBRM’s wastewater system is $450 million.