Sewage treatment at Munster

offers major benefits

Richard Bendall

The Ottawa Citizen
Monday, October 28, 2002

Re: Jock River debate could use more facts, Oct. 16.

The longstanding issue of replacing the failing sewage lagoons in Munster is relevant to the request by the owner of the nearby Riverbend Golf Course to take more water from the Jock River. The city wants to use a storage lagoon that would feed a pipeline to ship the sewage to the city's main treatment plant in Gloucester. The community wants a treatment plant in Munster.

It grates Munster-area residents that the city challenges the on-site treatment plant, even though it would bring two major benefits.

● Taxpayers would save the considerable amount of $17 million in lifecycle costs: $6 million for an on- site treatment plant versus $23 million for a pipeline-lagoon solution. (Lifecycle costs include both capital and operating and maintenance costs.)

● More than half a million litres a day of cleaned wastewater (far superior in quality to that of the Jock River water) would be supplied to the river at the Copeland Road bridge, upstream from the golf course. That addition would go a long way to offsetting golf-course owner Frank Chiarelli's current daily take of up to 227,000 litres on up to 15 days during the prime golfing season.

As with Munster, the City of Ottawa is ignoring the opportunity to service the residents of Manotick (Manotick Island pollution shameful, Oct. 16) with inexpensive, local treatment technology, similar to that approved for a new condominium complex there. This is the same technology that is used in cities as big as Niagara Falls, and would be the most effective way for Munster to save money, help the environment, keep water in the watershed, and eliminate the hated lagoons.

The Rideau Valley Conservation Authority notes that the water table in Munster and Richmond is not replenishing itself as quickly as the water is being drawn out. Yet we go blindly into the future with plans to pipe out all of Munster's wastewater, drawn originally from wells, and possibly increasing the water-taking permit of the golf course to five times its current level.

If a little bit of "ecosystem management" were fulfilled by the city, as touted in its official plan, we ratepayers would not have the impression that the golf course owner is going to suck the watershed dry.

Richard Bendall,

Munster

Lagoon Watchdog Committee

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