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Wastewater plant unique in North America

Thermal exchange system will provide heating and cooling to the athletes’ village

After several years' work and a very public controversy over funding models, the Whistler Waste Water Treatment Plant hosted an open house last week to show off $37.8 million in upgrades that have made the system one of the most advanced in B.C., if not all of Canada.

The upgrade has been in the planning stages since 2000, the result of Whistler's continued growth and the fact that the previous system sometimes struggled to treat sewage when the resort was at capacity.

But it took the Olympics and all the accompanying development to finally push the project through, Mayor Ken Melamed acknowledged last Thursday.

"It's a project that's been on our books for quite some time and it took a lot of collaboration, a lot of hard work to get it done," said the mayor. "It's one of our projects that was accelerated by the Games... at a cost of $37.8 million. It took substantial municipal resources, but it was made possible by a collaboration with the federal and provincial governments."

Construction began in 2008, five years after Whistler received grant approval from a federal and provincial infrastructure program. There are still a few stages of the treatment plant that are being tested, but all of the new facilities have come online in recent weeks and the plant is operational.

That includes new settlement and clarifying ponds, "digestion" ponds that use microbes to process waste materials, a system of blowers and scrubbers to capture and channel odors through wastewater to reduce the smell, a district energy system that uses the waste heat from the microbial digestion process to pre-warm water before sending it to the athletes' village for heating and a UV light system that eliminates the need for chemical treatment at the end of the process.

The other part of the process was completed in the fall, which is the treatment of the solid waste sludge at the new composting site at the entrance to the Callaghan Valley. One or two truckloads of sludge are trucked to the composter each day, where it is combined with wood waste, food waste and other biodegradable materials to create soil.

The province and federal government have contributed almost $13 million to the treatment plant project through a grant announced back in 2003. Whistler taxpayers are picking up the difference through an additional fee for homeowners and businesses. As well, the RMOW financed its end of the project by taking out a low-interest loan from the Union of B.C. Municipalities.

It wasn't all smooth sailing for the project. In February 2006 the municipal council of the day approved a private-public partnership (P3) to pay for the facility at the request of the B.C. government. Under the P3 agreement the same company would design, build and operate the system on a for-profit basis, potentially saving the RMOW money up front and during the long-term operation of the plant. However, critics said the P3 amounted to the privatization of water and wastewater in Whistler and pointed to examples where P3 agreements were actually more expensive in the long run.

The opponents convinced the municipality to adopt an Alternative Approval Process where the public could force a referendum on the P3 agreement. It never went that far, with the RMOW abandoning the P3 model in June 2006 after an overwhelming response organized by Whistler Watch - a grassroots organization that was created in response to the P3 controversy.

By passing on the P3 the RMOW also passed up some additional provincial funding for project. It's also been estimated that the debate over the funding model could have set the project's completion date back by a full two years.

James Hallisey, the acting manager of environmental services for the RMOW, helped oversee the project through to its completion.

"This is an unusually big project for Whistler, it would have really stood out if we were not doing all these other big projects at the same time," said Hallisey. "The result is more capacity, cleaner effluent into the water; we're using sludge in the composter for use in gardens... and there's the district energy system. We believe this will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 90 per cent compared to electric baseboards or natural gas furnaces. We'll have better numbers when we fire up the athletes' village in the next couple of weeks to really test the system."

During the microbial digestion process a certain amount of waste heat is created. Pipes carrying water are diverted through those tanks where the water is warmed to between 10 and 12 degrees Celsius and pumped to the athletes' village, where it is redistributed into homes and buildings. That warm water reduces the energy required to heat the air and warm water in hot water tanks.

The busier the resort gets the more waste is collected and the more waste heat that can be produced and captured.

According to Hallisey the water that returns to the wastewater plant is around six degrees Celsius, which is warmed once again in a closed loop cycle.

In the summer the system has the opposite effect, capturing ambient heat from the athletes' village and cooling the air.

That's just one of the things that makes this project unique in B.C. and Canada, said Hallisey. The use of UV light in the final stage of wastewater treatment, the composting of solid waste and the use of bubblers to scrub odours from the process are also leading edge.

"In North America, there's nothing like this," said Hallisey.

Conservative MP John Weston and Liberal MLA Joan McIntyre were on hand for the open house last week, both with a similar plan to showcase the project to the world during the Olympic Games.

"Joan and I keep turning up here for these announcements," Weston noted. "This project you have described as cutting edge comes on the heels of the Peak 2 Peak Gondola, the hydrogen buses... and now here's one more engineering feat to show the world."

McIntyre agreed. "It's a great project for the sustainability aspects, the new technologies. It's ahead of the curve.

"Three billion viewers will get a chance to see this technology on display here."

Melamed also discussed the possibility of expanding the system into neighbouring Function Junction if it's feasible. The district heating system is only at about 50 per cent capacity right now, and space has been allocated to install up to two additional heat exchangers and two additional pumps in the future.

"We have talked about exporting some heat to Function Junction, assuming it was economically viable," he said.