What does $340M worth of water treatment plant upgrades get you in Hamilton? Here's a look

As the City of Hamilton increases residents' water bills, in part to cover what it says are much-needed investments, it's touting $340 million worth of upgrades to the Woodward Avenue Wastewater Treatment Plant made over the last several years. 

According to the city, two million hours of labour went into the project. Nick Winters, the city's director of water, said it is the "largest capital program delivered by the city," by dollar value. The second most costly was the construction of the Red Hill Valley Parkway, at $245 million.

Winters said these changes have made the system more efficient, better able to withstand extreme weather and better prepared to handle a growing population.

If a city's water systems are working well, "you don't notice it," Winters told CBC Hamilton, during a recent tour of the plant. But following highly publicized spills and leaks in recent years, people in Hamilton have become more aware of the water and wastewater system, he said.

Improving the system is "just not cheap and it's not fast," Winters said. Hamilton is dealing with "the unfortunate legacy" of having a combined sewer system in older parts of the city, where one pipe collects both stormwater and the wastewater from our homes and businesses. That system was once common but municipalities have moved away from that set-up because it allows for overflows of sewage into the environment, which happen sporadically in Hamilton.

Woodward treatment plant is largest of its kind in Canada, city says

Some of the major upgrades could be seen during CBC Hamilton's recent visit.

Winters said the work, which was intended to improve infrastructure and the quality of treated wastewater, or effluent, entering Hamilton Harbour, is a step in the right direction. The plant puts about 350 million litres in the harbour each day, about as much water as 140 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

One change is a new pump station: a massive unit that lifts up wastewater so it can flow through the treatment plant using gravity. 

The unit was designed with two chambers so that one can be taken offline while the other is cleaned — something that wasn't possible in the older unit, which was in operation from 1964 to the end of 2021. The new unit, can pump 1,700 million litres a day, the city said.

Another upgrade is the addition of four diesel generators, which could allow Woodward to operate for days during a power outage, Winters said, adding they plan to add two more.

Wastewater treatment at Woodward also now involves three stages — previously, there were only two.

First, liquids and solids are separated. In the second stage, bacteria are used to break down biological material and ammonia is removed. In late 2022, Woodward began using a third phase of treatment which filters out even more solids as well as phosphorus, which contributes to unwanted algae blooms where wastewater is released. 

Winters calls the tertiary treatment facility "the jewel" of the Woodward plant and the city said it will release 500 fewer tonnes of phosphorous into the environment over the decade because of it. Since Hamilton only has one treatment plant, the city is the largest in the country, and so too is its tertiary treatment filtration system. 

It consists of 10 tanks that each hold 24 three-metre-wide cloth filter disks. The city said tertiary treatment is key to meeting targets set by the Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan, a joint strategy by neighbouring municipalities, the province and the federal government to restore the harbour.

'We've undercharged for water for a century': expert

The city is planning to start the next stage of upgrades at Woodward this year, Winters said, and also plans to replace aging infrastructure at the much smaller treatment plant in Dundas. He estimates the former will cost $1.1 billion and the latter about $147 million.

He said Hamilton wants provincial and federal support for this coming work. Both those levels of government contributed $100 million to the Woodward wastewater upgrades, with Hamilton putting in $140 million, the city said. 

Hamilton is also asking residents to pay more. City staff predict annual 10 per cent increases to water bills each year for the next nine years. Of the 10.04 per cent expected rate increase this year, the city said 2.39 per cent will go toward inflation, replacing or rehabilitating aging infrastructure, and program delivery. The city said the remaining 7.65 per cent of the rate increase is to recoup a loss of revenue due to provincial changes to legislation. 

Robert Haller, who leads the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association, says the key for water and wastewater managers is to get support for investments before systems face challenges or collapse.

"Many of these systems are 50 to 100 years old. They've lived their life cycle, but no one was putting away for the replacement," he said of the general state of municipal water systems. 

"We've undercharged for water for a century," he said, adding municipalities should prepare residents to pay more. He also calls on provinces and the federal government to support municipalities in these investments. He said system upgrades like what Hamilton is doing could cost too much for small communities.

He praised Hamilton for a "proactive" approach at Woodward, and said goals like efficiency and climate resiliency are shared across the water and wastewater sector.

Bryan Karney, a professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering who has expertise in water and wastewater systems, says Hamilton's investments are "a step in the right direction" for Hamilton Harbour, since reducing the flow of contaminants into that body of water is a good thing.

Going forward he says, municipalities like Hamilton should ensure they're tracking the performance of their wastewater systems to understand their environmental impacts and "detect when things are beginning to go amiss." 

Hamilton has had its share of things going amiss, including the 2022 discovery of a hole made in 1996 in a combined sewage pipe that led to a leak of 337 million litres of sewage. But Winters said a greater focus on infrastructure has been a silver lining.

"Something like this," he said, gesturing around the treatment plant, "is a testament to what can happen when you're paying attention to the right things."