KAWARTHA LAKES-The City of Kawartha Lakes says it is undertaking one of the largest construction projects in its’ recent history.
This project intends to upgrade and expand the existing Lindsay Water Pollution Control Plant (WPCP) by providing additional wastewater treatment capacity for Lindsay at a projected cost of more than $22 million. The plant is located at 48 Lagoon Road in Lindsay.
“The plant is being upgraded to provide additional wastewater treatment capacity for its largest urban centre to accommodate the projected growth as well as improve the treatment process to address operational issues and deficiencies so that the plant can be in compliant with the regulatory requirements by the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP).” Adam Found, Manager of Corporate Assets told Kawartha 411.
Officials say the Lindsay Water Pollution Control Plant, which treats wastewater, not drinking water, was experiencing exceedances for Total Ammonia Nitrogen (TAN) and Total Suspended Solids (TSS).
In 2018, the Ministry issued an order to hire a qualified professional to prepare an action plan to address these exceedances. The City responded to the Ministry’s order saying that a qualified professional had already been retained and that they were already working on an action plan, as they were also conducting a review of the overall system in anticipation of future infrastructure and growth needs.
“The order was put on hold as the Ministry recognized the City had already begun to address the exceedances. The plant implemented short term operational adjustments, such as removal of vegetation around the aeration lagoon, to address TAN and TSS levels until the capital funding and Council approval was available for the upgrades.” says the City.
According to the City, the major work components include:
- Construction of cast-in-place concrete aeration tanks with in-tank air diffusion systems to replace the existing aerated lagoon;
- Construction of a new aeration process blower building with high capacity aeration blowers;
- Upgrades to the headworks process and provision of flow monitoring to improve the influent flow control;
- Upgrades to the existing secondary clarification process for enhanced control of sludge removal from the existing clarifiers;
- Miscellaneous site works including construction of large underground pipes.
The City has awarded the construction of the project to Bennett Mechanical Installations (2001) Ltd. CIMA Canada Inc. has been retained to provide the construction management services on behalf of the City.
“The project is budgeted for $22.4M under 2020 Water-Wastewater Capital Budget which is approved by the Council.” Found says. “The project is funded from Sewage Development Charges (DC) Reserve and Sewage Debenture.”
The project will officially commence in November 2020 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2022. The existing wastewater treatment plant will remain in operation during construction and commissioning of the planned upgrades. All temporary shutdowns of major and minor process subsystems will take place in a sequence with minimum disruption to the operation of the plant. Given the location of the project site, no impact to the public is anticipated by the construction activities.
