Wastewater treatment plant upgrades could be on the horizon

A long-awaited upgrade to the City of Revelstoke’s wastewater treatment facility could mean one less sewage lagoon in the industrial park area in Southside. **Photo: file**

Revelstoke’s long-delayed wastewater treatment plant upgrades might finally have a clearer go after city representatives met with provincial staff at the Union of BC Municipalities 2024 conference. The city has been working to update current wastewater treatment facilities, which are operating based on a 1970s permit the city still holds, Steve Black, director of infrastructure and public works told Revelstoke Mountaineer.

In a June 2023 article, Black told Revelstoke Mountaineer he expected the updates to begin within the next month and be completed by the end of 2024. Instead, Revelstoke was told by the province the phased approach would no longer be viable and the city needed to return to the drawing board with the goal to meet all provincial and federal requirements from the beginning of the process. It was an expectation that pushed expected price tags for the upgrades from $13.6 million to $35 million.

“What are we supposed to do here? We don’t have that money laying around,” Black said. Since then, city staff have been working to bring the province back to the original plan.

“We’ve clawed back the phased approach,” Black explained, saying the province has laid out half a dozen expectations the city needs to plan for if they are to be fully approved for the phased approach plan. Staff are hard at work to provide that information for the province. If all goes according to plan, Black now hopes to see shovels in the ground by spring of 2025.

As for why the province suddenly changed their tune on Revelstoke’s original plan, Black theorized it might have been tied up in staffing changes and legislative expectations that don’t quite align with the timeframe municipalities need to change plans.

“The staff interpreting [current legislature and the Revelstoke plan] did not agree with the way we were proceeding when we got approval for that phased approach.”

It’s where opportunities like the Union of BC Municipalities 2024 conference come in handy, giving municipal staff and council members a chance to meet face-to-face with provincial staff to work out plans for municipal projects requiring provincial support.

“I do believe we have connections to the right people that are helping us through this process.”

Once shovels are in the ground, Revelstoke can expect to see the removal of one sewage lagoon and the installation of a mechanical plant that will better filter and treat wastewater. That will help the city meet discharge expectations for water entering the Illecillewaet River. A mechanical plant will also help with the spring turnover of the lagoons, which often leads to a phenomenon coined the Southside Sewer Stink.

Two other large updates to the site will include increased removal of phosphorus from the effluent to meet provincial and federal guidelines and increase capacity to meet expected population and usage growth in the next 20 years.

“We don’t want to build something that’s going to be useless in a few years,” Black said. “We want to make sure that whatever we do, we have enough space to accommodate that future growth.”