The Ottawa Citizen

EDITORIAL                                             Thursday, October 02, 2003

Costly pipe to Munster

Munster Hamlet's wastewater is a relatively small problem that has turned into a very large headache for the City of Ottawa. Now the city is about to try to bring the issue to a close by building a sewage pipeline into Richmond. But the city's case for a pipeline is not yet convincing.

The concern and disagreements over the wastewater from this community go back at least a decade. Munster Hamlet is essentially a village, separate from urban Ottawa. The community's sewage lagoon system has been failing and the city has been trucking waste away, at an annual cost of $500,000. There have been many experts brought in and a trip to the Ontario Municipal Board. So far, the bill exceeds $6 million for an engineering problem in a 430-home community, and we haven't really done anything. The city is also worried about being fined by the Ontario government if the existing lagoons leak.

An exasperated city council, including the local councillor, Janet Stavinga, has been convinced by the city's staff to build an 11-kilometre pipeline from Munster to a pumping station in Richmond. But even at this late hour, it might not be the right thing to do. It makes more sense to wait a little longer to try to have this waste problem treated locally.

The city has recently argued that the cost of building a pipeline from Munster is roughly similar to the cost of having a small local waste treatment plant in the village. But to arrive at these numbers, city staff projected the costs of building and operating the systems over a 90-year period. Who can know for sure what will happen over 90 years?

The more certain immediate costs are $7 million for a pipeline, but only half that for a small local treatment plant. And even that $7-million cost isn't all that certain because of the uncertain geology of the proposed routes it could take. (In the past, the estimated cost of a pipeline has been as high as $14 million.)

Richmond residents who live on properties with shallow wells object to the pipeline because it runs a sewage line past their homes. What if there's a failure of that line?

Councillor Stavinga, a strong proponent of the project, has faith in the pipeline technology, with its sensors. A city manager told angry Richmond residents that putting up with the pipeline is part of being in the urban area.

But Richmond and Munster are not urban communities; they're small settlements in rural areas of the new City of Ottawa. Richmond residents are concerned about the water quality in their wells and the aquifer, because they are not served by urban water pipes. The whole idea behind amalgamation was that communities could be within Ottawa's political boundaries without being forced into big-government, expensive solutions.

One of the firms that has proposed a local treatment plant for Munster is Seprotech Systems, an Ottawa company that has installed hundreds of small-scale treatment plants around the world and is promoted by the federal government as an environmental success story. The city has hired Seprotech to build a small treatment plant in Manotick as a pilot project for 70 homes. A key question is whether that plant's phosphorus output will be within provincial guidelines.

The city should see how this project goes before pushing ahead with the pipeline. If the local, small-scale plant works, it would be preferable to an expensive pipeline.

© Copyright  2003 The Ottawa Citizen