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Adam Huras
Telegraph-Journal

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Saint John is the only jurisdiction in New Brunswick to dump raw sewage into provincial waterways, the Department of Environment says.

And while there are plans for that to change, it is aging wastewater treatment systems throughout the province that will need constant attention to meet strict environmental standards for maintaining clean water resources.

The Port City made strides to erase its environmentally dreadful distinction Monday night, awarding a $51.8-million contract to build a new wastewater treatment plant.

While Saint John currently releases a high percentage of its wastewater untreated, Moncton also falls below a standard that the province is trying to reach, an Environment Department official says.

A flurry of recent wastewater treatment announcements in the province have been made to maintain and expand acceptable secondary treatment facilities at the standard reached by 78 per cent of Canadian sewer systems.

Only about 19 per cent are serviced by primary treatment facilities, similar to Moncton's. The remaining three per cent have superior treatment facilities or are among the few in Saint John's situation.

The Greater Moncton Sewerage Commission has a chemically assisted primary system.

"Almost all of the municipalities in the province have what would be called a secondary level of treatment," says Tim LeBlanc, manager of water and wastewater management for the province. "Those two other communities are still working at coming up to that standard."

Any treatment facility built after the 1970s was encouraged to accommodate the secondary system, LeBlanc says.

Primary treatment consists of settling ponds or lagoons in which roughly 60 to 70 per cent of solid waste settles to the bottom. The water is then discharged into a water body. Secondary treatment uses ponds and lagoons augmented with biological activity or aeration.

"I think in New Brunswick we're not quite there yet, but there are certainly some improvements," Petitcodiac Riverkeeper Tim Van Hinte says. "But it's going to take a large investment.

This week, three levels of government invested more than $1 million to improve local wastewater treatment services in New Brunswick. The federal, provincial and municipal governments each invested up to $448,604 to upgrade the sanitary sewer system in Petitcodiac, Alma and Sussex, ensuring that raw sewage from these areas will no longer be a threat to the surrounding environment.

"Mainly it's capacity, as the majority of our lagoons were built in the mid- to late-1970s so a lot of them are 30 and 35 years old, built for a particular size," LeBlanc says. "Overflows are certainly an area that needs to be looked at going forward and that is basically old pipes.

"A lot of these municipalities, they have pipes that are older than the treatment system."

Over time, the pipes that run to treatment centres develop cracks and then take in ground water. Heavy rains or snow melts create problems.

"The treatment system, or the pump stations that lead to the pump system, can't handle all that extra flow, so they end up bypassing whatever excess flow that they have," LeBlanc says. "There are issues with bypasses."

LeBlanc says the consequences are not as severe as discharging raw sewage, because the system would be diluted with the excess water at the same time. Regardless it's a concern that needs to be fixed, he says.

"Municipalities need to make plans," he says. "It's not the best situation. We have some of the oldest communities in Canada, maybe even North America, and they are still using those pipes which have been in place for many, many years."

Megan de Graaf, forests and watersheds project co-ordinator for the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, points to a report on drinking water when asked about water quality in New Brunswick.

The non-profit group Ecojustice ranked the province last in adopting drinking water quality standards when factoring in restrictions on business, forestry and agriculture environmental.

"Our water supply has to become an important issue in this province and in this country very soon," de Graaf says.