Sauble Water and Sewer. Addendum No 2 Revised
Sauble Water and Sewer. Addendum No 2 Revised
revised Jan 22/07
History:
In 1995 an Environmental Assessment was started to consider servicing options for Sauble Beach and Hepworth. This was 90% completed in 2001 and a 2001 Environmental Study Report recommended a regional water system supplied from Wiarton and a Sauble Beach wastewater treatment system.
Addendum No 1 in 2003 added Hepworth to the waste treatment system with a lift pump in Hepworth and a second lift at Clifford subdivision to push sewage to Sauble.
In the spring of 2006 the EA expired on a 5 year sunset clause without receiving funding and without completion of the final portion which was to locate and decide the best type of sewage treatment plant.
Addendum No 2 (not the revised version we have now) was presented for public review in June 2006 and received three Part II Order requests which brought the process to a halt. This addendum renewed the EA and chose location and design parameters for the wastewater treatment plant. It did not change the scope of the original project.
In the November 2006 election new municipal representatives were elected who wanted an opportunity to become more familiar with the project. Council met in Jan 2007 and reviewed the options for the project.
In March 2007 Council voted to continue the addendum No 2 process. The motion further elaborated that the EA be completed based on scaled down water and sewage alternatives. This motion indicated that Council was no longer interested in a water pipeline from Wiarton to supply Hepworth and Sauble Beach and that a small local water and sewage project in Sauble Beach would likely be the preferred alternative.
This brings us to the current status of the Environmental Assessment which is known as “Addendum No 2 – Revised. This addendum again resets the expired EA timeline and locates and designs a Sauble wastewater treatment plant. It goes much further and resizes the project to a small scale while attempting to address the concerns of two local citizen groups which stopped the original Addendum No 2.
Any concerns with the revised no 2 will have to be addressed by the Town and the deadline for presenting these concerns to the Town is Jan 31 2008.
Addendum No 2 Revised – What It Says
This Addendum makes a complete change in the project scope, reducing the preferred project to a small scale wastewater treatment system serving the DCA or Development Control Area of downtown Sauble Beach. Conceptually it is twinned with a water supply system but the addendum makes four references to the fact that a wastewater system is a first priority over a municipal water system which is defined as a second priority. It is noted that the OSTAR funded Amabel-Sauble water system construction will go ahead in 2008 and that this system has no surplus capacity for the downtown core. This system will combine some existing municipal systems to save operating costs.
The addendum refreshes the problem statement that lead to the reasons for preparing to construct a wastewater system to protect the environment. The Town is required to have a strategy in place that will protect the groundwater aquifer. There is discussion of the water testing that has been done since 1969. Outside of the DCA few bad water samples were found. Considering the recreational uses of the beach the available data from sampling do not point to a change or trend over the time since 1969 although the data are not strong enough for a rigorous statistical analysis.
The report reviews the situation with lot sizes in the DCA: The average size of properties in the core area is 8000 sq ft and considering modern standards where sand point water sources are present 20,000 sq ft lots are needed. (This is a projected number allowing for ground slopes, soil suitability number of bedrooms and other variables but may be different in each individual case)
There are detailed problem statements in the addendum which I will not cover here. It concludes that municipal servicing of the core area at this time is indicated and desirable. It states that a wastewater system is a first priority. The addendum also states that an inspection program and scheduled pumpouts are necessary to protect the aquifer where there are no municipal services.
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c'mon dodge
hey Dodge, great job so far, time is running out, and I am eager for your conclusion.
kltpzyxm
Reasons For Downsizing
The Reasons For Downsizing The Project.
There were some problems with the original project that resulted in the failure to proceed after the original Addendum No.2 Sheer size had resulted in a failure to receive funding interest from governments with large numbers of allocation requests. There was always some discussion about the need for this project outside of the DCA and whether the original EA failed to demonstrate that there was a problem. This lead to the use of ditchwater samples in the first No 2 addendum which rather than prove a problem existed became a basis for testing the validity of conclusions drawn in the addendum.
The biggest problem with the addendum No 2 was the then recommended design for the wastewater treatment plant. It allowed for direct discharge of treated wastewater into the Sauble River. The Sauble River is a valuable resource and it was felt that this project could potentially damage the ecosystem through phosphorous loading and temperature changes. Data showed Sauble Falls daily flow rates less than 1 cu m/sec at lowest natural flow before 1990 and no data are available for more recent flow rates. The idea of one outlet for collected and treated wastewater from all of Sauble and Hepworth plus future contributions from growth and development was not proven to have an advantage over widely distributed septic systems when considering environmental impact. This excludes an area such as the Sauble DCA which has been subjected to intensification in years past.
What Was Needed
A project design was needed that would be small enough to attract funding, that would be quickly ready for construction, that addressed the problems outlined in the problem statements in Addendum 2 – revised and that was sized to meet this requirement with design costs as low as possible.
The Design Area
The area to be serviced run east from Lakeshore to the D Line. It runs north and south variously up to three blocks. It is best to download the map in pdf format from the Town website rather than describe it.
Municipal Water
An amount of 105 gallons per minute is required from new wells to supply a parallel system and no new source exists at present. Water servicing was given a second priority because of time constraints, additional expense and well development needs. It is however, an option and a third addendum would be required to develop a source.
Wastewater
A sewer system servicing the DCA is recommended. Hepworth and the greater Sauble area would remain on private systems.
The system is not expandable beyond a 10% allowance and is designed to service existing properties. The size is designed to keep the outlet volume from the wastewater plant as low as possible. Total sewage design inflow is 279 cu m/day.
The treatment plant will discharge directly to the Sauble River but with a flow of 10% of the old larger design which serviced the whole Sauble and Hepworth area.
The sewage collection system consists of a small bore polyethylene pipe collection system and individual clarifier tanks located on each property.
Based on servicing 356 equivalent housing units the cost per property unit is estimated at $25,182. Traditional funding grants pay 2/3 of that amount if they are provided. Final connection costs are additional.
Water servicing costs are estimated at $18,000 per unit if it was to be provided.
my kingdom
If we got all these jobs done on this sewer and water thing , Walmart would be here in a flash and then thousands of people will come and I will woo them with my charm and they will love me, and then they will make me their leader, and I will rule all that I see with an iron fist appointing my minions and entourage regardless of thier ability to function, as long as they are loyal and do my bidding and I will cast out those who dare question me HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I will be a master of all I see HAHAHAHAHAHa.(insert darth vader heavy breathing sound byte)
DArn I forgot about those pictures from that college party 25 years ago that suddenly surfaced , oh well my political career was short lived.....
About The Collection System and Summary
The Collection System
The system is called a small bore sewer collection system. There will be 6,700 meters of collection pipe some of it 150 mm (6 inch) and some 200 mm (8 inch).
There will be 356 tanks located one on each property serviced. An extra 10 % of that number (37 tanks) can be added before the system reaches capacity limits. A cost of $3,500 is estimated for each tank and is included in the total system cost.
The tanks function in a way that is familiar to septic tank owners except that there is no field bed. There is a chamber where the level of clarified waste from the home builds up over time. At some given level a pump in the tank is activated and pumps wastewater into the sewage collection system. The pump shuts off when the level in the tank is pumped down a preset number of inches. In this way some period of time may elapse in intervals when the tank is not contributing to the collection system. During the bidding process some variations on this theme may emerge.
These tanks will accumulate solid material at the bottom and require pumping every ten years. In order to evenly distribute the pumpings the Town will most likely start the rotation sooner than ten years.
These tanks will not be located on road allowance they will be on private property. They will likely be as close as possible to the collection system line which services both sides of the street.
Summary.
These are my opinions not contents of the addendum.
The proposed system will be sufficient to do its job but will quickly reach capacity. It is a protection system rather than a growth and development system. The design keeps the costs affordable for individual property owners.
Even though there is a radical change in the scope of this system since the original Addendum No 2 was presented there has been no public meeting to present it. At some point this will have to be done probably in the summer and DCA residents should have some way of deciding if they want to go ahead with this. Whether or not this project is ever built the groundwater still has fall back protection in the septic inspection program.
Treated effluent is still to be discharged directly to the Sauble River. No recent flow rate data have been given for Sauble Falls and it could be less than the 1990 figures. We don’t know what it is. The addendum has not given us any information about dilution on low flow days when the plant is operating at capacity. Therefore we don’t know if the environment is being protected and that constitutes grounds to ask for more data and more information before this proceeds.
The possibility of subsurface ground discharge during the summer season only has not been given enough weight in the discussion leading to a preferred solution of direct discharge to the river.
This system is a template for increasing the size of the collection area and thus the amount of treated effluent discharged. It is a given that there will be pressure to do that. Again this depends on the capacity of the river to accept effluent. If a system could be chosen which did not permit river discharge it would be a better solution for the community. This much is also stated in Addendum No 2 – revised.
It is likely that we will have to go through a federal EA for this project so we need to get these issues settled now.