A $1.49-billion-dollar sewage solution that’s a bad call

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/03/2025 (209 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If the province wants it, the province should pay for it.

This week, the long-awaited update on the cost of biological nutrient removal facilities at Winnipeg’s North End Water Pollution Control Centre (NEWPCC) was released. The estimate is a whopping $1.491 billion — up $663 million, or 80 per cent, from the 2018 estimate. And city staff are proposing that Winnipeg rate payers cover all of this cost.

In this economy?

In a cash-strapped city, a province fighting ballooning inflation, and a country in the midst of a tariff war with its closest trading partner, $1.491 billion is a lot of money. Mayor Gillingham himself acknowledges that the water-rate increase required to pay for this system would be “crippling” for Winnipeg residents, and has vowed to stop it.

Even more astounding than the cost, though, is that biological nutrient removal (BNR) is — at best — unnecessary, and — at worst — detrimental to collective efforts to manage Lake Winnipeg’s algal blooms.

The use of this specific technology has been dictated by the province. Set as a requirement in NEWPCC’s provincial operating license in 2005, BNR has also been coupled with additional requirements to reduce total nitrogen loading and to maximize biosolid reuse. Yet none of these three provincial licence conditions actually contribute to reducing algal blooms in Lake Winnipeg.

BNR is just one (incredibly expensive, cold-temperature sensitive) potential option among many possible approaches to manage phosphorus loads from sewage treatment plants. More cost-effective technologies exist, widely proven in other jurisdictions — chemical phosphorus reduction successfully meets regulatory limits around the Great Lakes.

In fact, a chemical system achieved phosphorus compliance at Winnipeg’s own south end sewage treatment plant from August 2022 through September 2024. And a chemical system is already in place at Winnipeg’s north end plant.

By optimizing this existing system as new biosolids facilities are built, NEWPCC can be brought into compliance with its 1 mg/L phosphorus limit.

Total nitrogen reduction — another unnecessary provincial requirement — will have no effect on Lake Winnipeg’s algal blooms, as nitrogen-fixing algae simply pull what they need from available stores of nitrogen in the atmosphere.

In fact, sewage treatment that reduces nitrogen may actually provide a competitive advantage to harmful blue-green algae, which compensate for low levels of nitrogen by fixing their own.

And “maximum biosolids reuse”, also stipulated in the provincial NEWPCC operating licence, is a fancy way to describe spreading large volumes of biologically available phosphorus back onto agricultural fields in the Red River Valley.

After going to all that effort to capture phosphorus through our sewage treatment system, are we just allowing it to wash back into the river as soon as we get a heavy rain?

Instead of biological nutrient removal, Winnipeg has no shortage of imminent and urgent sewage treatment projects, in which a $1.491 billion investment would make a measurable difference to the health of downstream rivers and lakes.

A year ago, a major pipe carrying raw sewage under the Red River to the south end sewage treatment plant burst, leaking 230 million litres — and counting — downstream to Lake Winnipeg. This pipe is expected to cost $20 million and won’t be repaired until late 2025.

Winnipeg’s combined sewer overflow system is infamously projected to take until 2095 to replace, at a cost of $2.3 billion (in 2019 dollars).

And the north end treatment plant, even assuming the current upgrades are complete by 2030 as required by the province, will last only another 20 years before it reaches capacity again in 2050.

Yes, that’s the most mind-boggling of all: as soon as the current upgrades are finished (a process that will have taken from 2005 to 2030), we’ll have to start upgrading all over again — or risk the very same capacity challenges we’re currently facing.

All the more reason to be judicious with our money and effort now.

For the past 20 years, the province has dug in its heels about biological nutrient removal, nitrogen reduction and biosolids reuse. For the past 20 years, none of these provincial dictates have been achieved at NEWPCC. And all the while, phosphorus reduction — the one approach science has shown to be effective at reducing algal blooms — has been mired in provincial red tape, a casualty of 20 years of cost increases.

If the province refuses to be clear-headed about what’s really needed to protect Lake Winnipeg, if the province continues to insist on this $1.491 billion project — then the province should pay for it.

Alexis Kanu is the executive director of the Lake Winnipeg Foundation.