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Mayor: Goodbye 'floatables' Kelly says sewage treatment plant already making a difference in harbour By AMY PUGSLEY FRASER City Hall Reporter Tue. Feb 12, 2008 Brad Anguish, project director of Harbour Solutions, conducts a tour of the control room of the wastewater treatment facility for a group including Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Mayor Peter Kelly on Monday morning. (ERIC WYNNE / Staff) Halifax Harbour is already on its way to becoming a healthy and environmentally friendly asset for the city, Mayor Peter Kelly said Monday. "I've seen a difference over the last few weeks," Mr. Kelly said Monday, after a formal announcement to open the new Halifax sewage treatment plant on Upper Water Street. "If you walk along the waterfront, you can see that change now." Although officially opened Monday, the plant has been up and running for a few weeks. And the effects are already quite dramatic, the mayor said. But it's the elements now missing from the harbour - pleasantly noticeable in their absence - that mean the most, he said. The "floatables," the mayor said, referring delicately to the more solid aspects of sewage, "aren't there any longer." He said the water is clearer and there is hardly any foul smell, "not like there used to be before." And while "it's not drinking-water quality, it's a hell of a lot better than it was at this time last year." City hall has tried for years to clean up its harbour. Every day, more than 180 million litres of raw sewage and waste water has been flushed and piped directly into the second-largest natural harbour in the world. Over the years, the pollution has closed harbour shellfisheries and a handful of public swimming beaches. But on Monday, politicians and project developers got a first-hand look at how the five-year, $333-million project, started in November 2003, will change all that. Touring the first of three harbour-side treatment plants - the others, in Dartmouth and Herring Cove, are slated to open this fall - they were given a brief summary of how 40 sewer outfalls in Halifax were collected and diverted to the state-of-the-art facility. Looking like a whitewashed industrial warehouse with a few elements from 2001: A Space Odyssey thrown in, the place is chock full of valves, pipes, switches, tanks and hoses. Central to the operation is a cavernous room with vats of rushing water gurgling under sliding panels in the floor. Nearby annexes include a room boasting 128 round black hatches - each ironically about the size of a toilet seat - and a pristine laboratory. There's also a control room, outfitted with black leather chairs and cherry wood cabinetry, and seven flat-screened computers that keep an eye on things like "Fine Screens" and "Sludge Press." There's a bit of an odour to the place too, but it's more like passing by the Halifax Junior Bengal Lancers stables on a good day. "It's not as bad as I would have expected," whispered one of the about three dozen guests who accompanied the mayor, ACOA Minister Peter MacKay and Jamie Muir, minister of Service Nova Scotia and municipal relations, on the tour. The federal government put in $60 million toward the project and the province will provide $30 million over a 15-year period, as well as providing about $2 million in required land. "The harbour . . . is one of the greatest assets to the East Coast," Mr. MacKay said, congratulating the "true believers" of the project. Indeed, even Coun. Sue Uteck (Northwest Arm-South End) said she was pretty surprised to finally be witnessing the official opening of Halifax's treatment plant. "It was actually a little emotional because my late husband was the project's champion," she said, referring to former deputy mayor Larry Uteck, who was diagnosed in 1998 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and died four years later. "So I think he'd be pretty pleased on this day." Credit should also go to past councils and former mayor Walter Fitzgerald, she said. Those sentiments were echoed by Mr. Kelly, who thanked the former mayor and the councillors who started the ball rolling on the initiative back in 1996. "This is a day long in the making," he told about 70 guests who gathered later at nearby HMCS Scotian for a reception. "It's been talked about for years and years and years." But it's all worth it, he said. "You'll see a dramatic change, especially once we get the Dartmouth plant up and operating as well," he told reporters afterward. The mayor joked with reporters about swimming in the harbour but didn't directly answer a question about whether Black Rock Beach in Point Pleasant Park might be reopened to public swimming in the years to come. "We'll have to wait and see." As for criticisms that the city proceeded with the plants in advance of new guidelines that would force it to make expensive upgrades, the mayor said the city already has a plan in place. The plants can be retrofitted for about $90 million, he said. "If the laws of the land change and/or the dollars are made available to us to upgrade, we're ready to go." ( apugsley@herald.ca)
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