The Watch CALGARY PUMPS $1 BILLION INTO WASTEWATER TREATMENT UPGRADE
LATITUDE
After five years of rapid growth, things have probably cooled somewhat on the population front in Calgary. But growth still poses a challenge to city infrastructure. To that end, the city continues to invest in infrastructure in a big way to keep up, including a $1 billion expansion underway at its Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant. Begun in 2014, the overall project will finish in 2024, the city’s website says. CBC News, meanwhile, bills the upgrade of the facility in southeast Calgary “the $1-billion Calgary megaproject you don’t know about.” As major projects go, explains the news outlet, upgrades of this sort don’t exactly capture the public imagination. But Bonnybrook plant is a big deal, handling all of the wastewater from the northern half of the city and even some of the communities beyond Calgary’s border. It currently has the capacity to serve 946,000
people—the upgrade will get it to 1.37 million and serve the city’s needs into the mid-2030s. The initiative also includes the creation of a new, $95-million biosolids dewatering facility (already in operation) and expansion of an existing co-generation plant. The plant captures biogas and solids to generate electricity and heat. Flood protection upgrades should ensure the plant never again sustains the kind of damage it did in 2013. A new berm on its Bow River side will prevent overland flooding, and a new outlet a kilometre downstream will keep water from being pushed into the plant through outfall channels.
JUST TO BE CLEAR The big build happening at Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant in Calgary includes a secondary clarifier. -photo courtesy the City of Calgary
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