BONNYVILLE – The decision to close Ardmore, Fort Kent and the Therien lagoons to outside septic haulers effective July 31 by the MD of Bonnyville council has ruffled feathers among residents, businesses owners and septic haulers who relied on the municipality’s lagoons for disposing septage.
The indefinite closure of the lagoons will affect roughly 11,911 MD residents who rely on holding tanks or septic tanks to store their grey water and effluent, according to data collected in a Bulk Septic Hauling Feasibility Study conducted by AECOM in 2021.
Only resident and businesses that are tied into municipal sewage lines in Ardmore and Fort Kent will remain unaffected by the council’s June 22 decision.
The decision made by council happened quickly after the Ardmore Lagoon was closed unexpectedly on June 9, as a result of a plugged transfer pipe.
Local haulers told Lakeland This Week that they had been informed of the Ardmore closure just one day before.
The Therien Lagoon was reopened as a temporary measure to offer a transition period for septic haulers before all MD lagoons closed and haulers were encouraged to utilize Cold Lake’s Wastewater Treatment Facility.
At the time of the decision the Fort Kent lagoon was already closed to haulers due to operational concerns related to overloading, according to the municipality.
While the MD is a partner in the Cold Lake Wastewater Treatment Facility (WWTF), there is still a fee to use the facility and a significant distance to travel from many homes and businesses within the MD.
“The facility is owned by Cold Lake Regional Utilities Services Commission (CLRUSC) and the commission members are the City of Cold Lake, MD of Bonnyville, 4 Wing Cold Lake and Cold Lake First Nations,” Azam Khan, the general manager of Infrastructure for the City of Cold Lake, told Lakeland This Week.
“The facility is operated by the City of Cold Lake for CLRUSC, under contract.”
The fast-paced move that came without a contingency plan to reopen any of the MD lagoons has frustrated septic haulers and residents alike.
Sunset Beach Resident Vivianne Robinson reached out to Lakeland This Week to share her frustrations.
Robinson has owned property on Moose Lake since 1984 and relies on a large holding tank that needs to be emptied every few months.
When Robinson learned of the MD’s decision to close the lagoons in the newspaper, she immediately called her regular septic hauler to empty her tank before the July 31 deadline. To her dismay, the hauler was booked solid until Aug. 3, due to an increase in demand to empty tanks before the Therien Lagoon closed.
“I was a little shocked when I first read it in the paper. If I had read the paper on time, then I would have called him earlier and then maybe I would have had my tank empty before the end of the month,” she said. “Normally if I call on a Wednesday or something you get it done in a day or two.”
When her tank was finally emptied, it was taken to the Town of Bonnyville’s Wastewater facility that recently opened to MD residents.
In July, Town council approved a bylaw allowing MD residents to access their wastewater treatment facility with a $45 tipping fee and an additional $9 charge for every cubic metre of effluent disposed of into the town’s system. The rate for MD residents is half of what industrial companies are charged to dispose effluent in the town.
Despite the lower rate, Robinson saw an increase of approximately $150 from the last time her tank was emptied in Ardmore.
While Robinson is glad that the town is allowing MD residents to dispose waste, saving a trip for haulers that would otherwise go to Cold Lake, she feels like the additional cubic metre cost is still price-gouging MD residents.
She says something needs to be done by municipal leaders.
“We all need to take responsibility, and I think the MD is not taking the responsibility. This is their problem, and they need to fix it, or they better find some other way to make this come down a little bit in price,” she said.
“I'm a senior and this is really going to affect my budget... as a senior, our fuel went up, our power went up, the gas went up, everything went up. And we still have to pay regardless.”
While Robinson lives alone and has the benefit of a large tank, she is concerned for others that need to empty their tanks more regularly.
“Can you just imagine what an expense this is going to be? When you can’t afford to empty your tank what do you do?” Robinson questioned. “How many people are going to put holes in their tanks because feel they have no choice?”
She believes the MD’s move was made at the expense of their residents and will cause a lot of mental anguish for people.
“I don't think any of the councillors, this is affecting any one of them... they just decided let's just close it, not thinking about any of their constituents,” said Robinson.
“They jumped the gun for sure in closing (the lagoons) within that (four) week period. The MD, I think has to figure out something because everyone has to go, there's no choice about it,” she said, adding that she feels wastewater treatment is a basic need and a responsibility of the municipality.
MD resident William Bridges, who lives roughly 20 km north of Glendon, saw the cost of emptying his holding tank jump from $189 to about $350.
When Bridges learned that council members opted out of de-sludging of the Ardmore sewage facility lagoon cells, which could allow haulers to continue using the lagoon, he was outraged and felt that the municipality was “backing out of a responsibility.”
During the June 22 meeting, where council voted to close all of its sewage treatment facilities owned and operated by the MD of Bonnyville to outside haulers, they were also presented with the option to approve “the unbudgeted expenditure in the amount of $50,000 for the de-sludging of the Ardmore sewage facility lagoon cells to be funded from the Unrestricted Surplus.”
RELATED STORY: MD closes sewage lagoons to outside haulers, town and city to take on rural load
Bridges says the council's decision was a knee-jerk reaction that didn’t take into account the municipal responsibility to provide its residents with an essential service.
“They are responsible for things like this, it’s a basic need,” he said.
“It's going to cost them about $60 grand to pump out and de-sludge their lagoons. Well, I'm thinking how much money did they put into those stupid walkways around Moose Lake and the 7 km by Glendon?” Bridges questioned.
“They have about a five or six-foot wide paved walking path to the tune of how many hundreds of thousands of dollars, but $60 grand is pretty expensive for them to do something they don't want to do.”
Bridges says that the decision to not repair and upgrade the lagoon puts low-income people and seniors at risk while putting small businesses in jeopardy.
“They're almost forcing people to say, ‘Well, I can't afford it, maybe I'll just pump it back into the ground again.’ You can't really do that, but that's what they are almost forcing people to do.”
The owner of Bob’s Portable, Robert Hodgins, presented to the MD of Bonnyville council on July 13, to share his concerns on the MD’s decision to close the lagoons and the possible solutions he sees moving forward.
Hodgins told council that even if the lagoons are closed to outside haulers, there is still extensive measures that should be taken to improve them.
“I’ve been working within the MD for nearly 17 years and these hamlet lagoons are in peril and what we need to do is fix them.”
The problem is that sewage is not breaking down fast enough at the rate it’s entering the lagoons, he told council, adding that improvements to the MD’s facility like aeration is needed.
He also suggested that the municipality should not only be charging a fee to dump at their lagoons to help cover maintenance costs, but that they should have been alternating which lagoons were open to haulers every three to four months to reduce overloading one system.
Hodgins expressed that the lagoons should have never been allowed to reach such a high level of disrepair.
“Our children have to take over in the next 10 to 15 years,” he said, “I don’t want them to have a mess or something that could’ve been fixed by a few things.”
Lakeland This Week reached out to several local septic haulers who did not want to comment publicly on the MD’s decision but shared similar views and concerns to those of the residents and Hodgins.
They say the MD’s decision will have negative impacts on their businesses.
2021 feasibility study highlights issues
In 2021, AECOM an American multinational infrastructure consulting firm carried out a Bulk Septic Hauling Feasibility Study for the MD of Bonnyville that identified shortcomings in the municipality's waste treatment systems.
AECOM was retained to conduct a review of the lagoon systems given the challenges with performance and maintenance, as well as the municipalities inability to recover costs related to septage hauling.
The report looked at the existing hauled wastewater facilities, evaluated improvement options, and discussed cost recovery opportunities for the municipality.
AECOM’s report quickly identified that the municipality had no cost recovery system in place at any of the lagoon facilities for hauled wastewater.
They also pointed out that the inflow of wastewater is not monitored in either of the two gravity collection systems at Ardmore or Fort Kent, and neither is the hauled wastewater received at the Ardmore lagoon.
“Organic loading at the lagoon facilities is not known as there is no existing sampling or monitoring data,” indicates the 2021 report.
The consulting firm was only able to estimate the hauled in wastewater based on truck capacities for MD haulers gathered through a survey in tandem with the site access gate entry log from June 2019 to June 2020.
The estimated “combined organic loading of 93.2 kg/day to 117.9 kg/d may be approaching the capacity of the existing lagoon system,” states the report.
AECOM’s report also highlighted septage receiving system issues that should be addressed by the municipality.
“The MD grants access to any septage hauler that completes the facility use agreement and provides a key fob deposit... The key fob system only records the user and the number of times the fob was used. Multiple entries/exits may occur with a single fob scan, and the volume discharged per use cannot be determined,” reads the report.
The concern over unauthorized haulers entering the facility and lack of cameras to monitor what is deposited into the lagoon was also noted to Lakeland This Week by many of septic haulers as well.
Many operational issues with the septage receiving system identified by the MD are related to the inorganic waste, predominantly sand, overloading the septage pond, blocking downstream gravity piping and accumulating in the downstream anaerobic cells, explains the report.
The report suggests the exact entry of these inorganic materials is unknown due to a lack of monitoring and oversight.
“A greater understanding of the organic loading resulting from the trucked wastewater and the current level of treatment being achieved is necessary before confirming the recommended improvement approach,” states AECOM.
However, based on 2 per cent annual growth, the population of Ardmore is expected to increase by 50 per cent by 2040, making it likely that upgrades at the Ardmore Lagoon will be required regardless, the report indicates.
“Once flow monitoring and sampling data have been compiled, detailed design of the aeration system could be completed to appropriately size the system for the loading data and anticipated future (2040) loading as the second improvement stage,” states the report, looking at how the current Ardmore Lagoon could be improved to meet the future needs of the community.
“It would be recommended to implement the aeration system in the existing pond configuration to minimize cost while maintaining flexibility for an increase in future treatment.”
In the upcoming week, the Reeve along with administration and council are planning to have an informal meeting about the lagoon closures after receiving a high volume of calls from community members on the decision, Reeve Barry Kalinski told Lakeland This Week.
“I don't know if we'll be changing anything,” he said. “There's just too much sewage being dumped in these little lagoons. So, we had to do something. We can't let them overflow so something has to be done.”
Kalinski says after council and administration have met, he will have more information to relay to residents and media on the matter.
*With files from Mario Cabradilla
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