From odours to ‘murky’ substances, South Shore communities are struggling with wastewater treatment
For many residents across Lunenburg County, the summer of 2019 will be remembered for its foul smell, murky discharges and straight pipes.
The fact is that communities across the region, ranging from Liverpool to Mahone Bay, are struggling to deal with issues relating to wastewater treatment.
And things might get stinkier before they get better.
“The financial burden of wastewater upgrades is certainly the greatest hurdle these communities are facing,” explained Brooke Nodding, executive director at the environmental nonprofit Coastal Action.
For example, she said, many South Shore communities have identified issues like straight pipes but are struggling to find the funds for these infrastructure projects. Securing funding, as well as the work itself, takes time.
Mayor David Devenne of Mahone Bay is all too familiar with straight pipes.
In fact, the town has been dealing with a previous council’s decision not to connect certain properties — whose sewage still drains directly into the harbour — to the town’s wastewater treatment plant back in 1994.
Devenne said the issue at the time was that the landscape of the town made lift pumps necessary to move sewage from homes to the plant.
“The cost to add those last four or five houses were prohibitive because they themselves require their own lift pump systems,” he said, adding that the pumps are still expensive.
Town council received a report back in January addressing ways to fix the issue but have been dealing with public backlash after a social media post brought the issue to the forefront earlier in the summer.
Devenne said the town has applied to existing federal and provincial programs but couldn’t shoulder the cost to connect the remaining properties alone.
The project could cost anywhere between $600,000 and $800,000.
“The taxpayers in town cannot afford to do this without the federal and provincial governments’ assistance,” he said.
The Town of Lunenburg is also dealing with its own sewage treatment issues.
Although its wastewater treatment plant installed a new biofilter last fall to deal with odours, the town put out a notice mid-july that a white, “murky” substance had made its way into the system and been dumped into the harbour.
The town has since started a social media campaign to inform residents about which substances can be harmful to the plant.
“Some materials may not be safe for the plumbing in your house, the public sewers that service the community, or ultimately the ocean,” reads the public notice.
But town council has also been considering a new wastewater treatment plant given two reports it received earlier in the year that highlighted the current system’s slip in performance.
The current plant was built in 2003 and certain sections of it, as per one of the reports, are heavily corroded.
In a previous interview with the South Shore Breaker, Mayor Rachel Bailey said the town was exploring a $9.84 million membrane bioreactor (MBR) system that would significantly improve the effluent quality.
Sarah Ensslin, the CBCL process engineer who presented the report to Lunenburg’s council back in May, said the new plant, although expensive, was the golden standard for sewage treatment.
“It is significantly better than what’s required by the province right now,” she said.
However, Nodding explained that governments have set the bar low for wastewater treatment.
“Wastewater effluent regulations for fecal bacteria must be better aligned with Health Canada’s recreational standards,” she said.
“This is a province-wide issue which requires both provincial and federal investments in wastewater infrastructure, as well as legislative changes.”
David Dagley, the mayor for the Region of Queens Municipality, said the municipality would do whatever it could to be proactive in wastewater treatment given the smell that has hung around Liverpool for much of the summer.
“We’re going to be proactive moving forward and do what we need to keep it at a level where we don’t encounter this again,” he said of the odour, which angered residents and visitors alike.
The South Queens Sewer Treatment Facility was built in 2001 and uses a series of three lagoons and a UV bank to treat the area’s wastewater; the smell was eventually attributed to the primary lagoon.
“It was determined at that time that we would have to de-sludge the lagoons in 25 to 30 years,” said Dagley of the plant’s construction.
However, 18 years after it was built, it became necessary to act due to a public outcry.
Nodding said it’s up to the public to put pressure on municipal and provincial authorities to push through change.
And people are starting to listen; both Lunenburg and Mahone Bay turned to Coastal Action for guidance with their wastewater issues.
“Our water quality programs continue to spread throughout the South Shore region as our government and industry stakeholders become increasingly more cognizant of water quality issues and their impacts on tourism, recreation and the environment,” she said.