Answer $400-M question

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/09/2011 (5334 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the march to save Lake Winnipeg, the provincial government has put Winnipeg taxpayers on the hook for a controversial, expensive upgrade to the North End wastewater treatment plant. Upgrades are required to remove more phosphorus from wastewater, but even the Selinger administration now concedes that removing nitrogen — once the core of a hotly debated dispute over how to cut damaging effluent polluting Lake Winnipeg — is unnecessary.

That shift seemed to suggest the city could save itself a whole lot of money, with a cheaper treatment system targeting phosphorus alone. But the province has moved the goal posts again: Now it says a stricter standard for ammonia yet to come means there can be no change to the design of the new treatment system.

Tory leader Hugh McFadyen’s election platform promises to require the city to remove only phosphorus from its wastewater. But that does not say where the Tories stand on the amount of ammonia the city is discharging in its wastewater to the Red River.

Last spring, ammonia became the issue driving costs for the upgrade to the city’s North End treatment plant. That’s when the Selinger government decided to bow to the weight of scientific evidence that phosphorus, not nitrogen, is the culprit in the rapid growth of blue-green algae choking Lake Winnipeg. However, it also announced the city will still have to build a full “biological nutrient removal” system. The full BNR system, once justified as the only system capable of removing enough nitrogen, costs $400 million. The city’s preference for a chemical treatment system that removes phosphorus costs only $50 million.

But the province doesn’t believe the city’s plant can meet its targets on wastewater ammonia limits. Further, with stricter limits for ammonia about to hit, the only option is to build the BNR system, it says. And further still, provincial officials say that going to the higher-end treatment will allow the reclamation of phosphorus to be used for other purposes — farming, for example. That’s more environmentally sound, the argument goes, because it means phosphorus can be recycled here at home, rather than be imported.

The city insists it can meet the ammonia limits within its environmental licence. And is taken aback that the Conservation department is now insisting that it get ready to cut ammonia to meet limits three to five times more stringent — Manitoba follows American standards, which are tightening up as early as this fall, based on research that fish are more sensitive to ammonia than previous thought.

The province’s shifting goals force city officials and Winnipeg ratepayers to follow a moving target on the costs, rationale and licensing requirements for wastewater treatment. Mr. McFadyen’s promise suggests he will fix this, but what Winnipeg really needs is to know what the best science says about the impact of pollutants in effluent, and specifically whether, now, ammonia really is the toxin to fish the province — based on another jurisdiction’s say-so — is presenting it to be. Then Winnipeggers can decide if a $400 million wastewater treatment system is worth paying for.