WATER INFRASTRUCTURE An overview of the Annacis Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, where a multi-stage expansion project is underway to keep up with the area’s growing population.
‘IT’S FORWARDS OR
NOTHING’ Crews tunnel beneath Fraser River to new wastewater treatment standards BY SAUL CHERNOS
PHOTOS: METRO VANCOUVER
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urrowing through thick sand underwater, ensuring the safety of workers, and planning for earthquake resiliency are all in a day’s work for proponents of a new tunnel and diffuser system being built as part of a massive program to rebuild and upgrade several Metro Vancouver wastewater treatment plants. The regional government, which includes 21 municipalities, one treaty First Nation and one electoral area, manages water and wastewater systems for more than 2.7 million people, and substantial growth is projected over the next few decades. Factor in increasingly stringent environmental regulations and never-ending worries about a significant
earthquake – something not taken lightly on the West Coast – and you have one of Canada’s most ambitious programs to usher local wastewater treatment infrastructure into a new era. While these projects fall into the same overall program, they’re each at different stages and have their own criteria and timelines, with individual management, contractors and budgets. A brand new North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant in North Vancouver, slated to open in 2024, will replace the 50-year-old Lions Gate plant and upgrade the level of treatment from primary to secondary by adding clarifiers, digesters and other technology. Metro Vancouver has also approved a similar plan
to upgrade the 57-year-old Iona Island treatment plant at the mouth of the Fraser River, near Vancouver International Airport, with an expected 2030 launch date. And, the region is designing an expansion so the Northwest Langley plant, which currently serves 30,000 people, can handle sewage for a geographically broader population of 230,000. However, it’s work already underway to reconfigure the Annacis Island plant 20 kilometres inland on the Fraser that offers a window on the intensity of the overall effort and the complexity of modernizing sewage infrastructure. The plant, in the City of Delta, is already one of the region’s largest wastewater treatment facilities, on-sitemag.com / 17
