Winnipeg getting $150M more from Ottawa for North End sewage plant

The City of Winnipeg is getting $150 million in additional funding from the federal government to help with upgrades to the North End sewage treatment plant. 

The funding was included in the federal fall economic statement released in Ottawa on Monday.

"To build the houses Canadians need, we need to invest in the capacity for communities to grow and densify. Adequate water and solid waste infrastructure is essential to making this happen," the statement said.

The money would not flow to the city until the 2026-27 fiscal year.

The funding from the federal government will help the city "significantly," Mayor Scott Gillingham said in an interview on Tuesday.

"It doesn't answer all of the questions and it doesn't fully fund the remainder of the North End plant, but it's progress, and I welcome the progress," he said.

Cost estimates for the project, the most expensive in Winnipeg's history, have soared in recent years. The budget for the second phase of the project, constructing a new biosolids facility, recently increased by $482 million to $1.04 billion. 

Ottawa had initially committed up to $200.9 million to the biosolids phase of the project.

Earlier this year, the city revised its estimate of the full cost of the project to $3 billion, an increase of more than $600 million over the previous most recent cost estimate of $2.38 billion.

Mayor Scott Gillingham has called on the federal and provincial governments to help.

"There has been a lot of dialogue about funding the North End plant between the federal, provincial governments and my office as well," Gillingham said in an interview with CBC News.

"This is a shared priority that I know that [Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew] and I have."

Gillingham has repeatedly said the city needs to finish the North End plant, as the city cannot add new housing or industries without the sewage treatment capacity. It has also been mandated by the provincial government to remove nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater in order to protect Lake Winnipeg.

In a report to the water and waste committee in November, city staff estimated the plant had four to six years of capacity left. The provincial government rejected a city request earlier this year to extend the deadline to complete the project from 2030 to 2032.

In November, the province announced it was committing an additional $30 million to the biosolids phase, for a total of $197.4 million.

Manitoba Environment Minister Tracy Schmidt said the province was not told about the funding in the fall economic statement, and she had not had any conversations about it with anyone from the federal government.

Schmidt also did not commit any more funding for the project above what the province announced in November, but said the province is committed to seeing the project "across the finish line."

"We think this is an important step in the right direction. We certainly acknowledge that there's more work to do. Those negotiations are ongoing and will continue to be ongoing to make sure that phase two gets done," she said.

With the federal contribution, there remains more than $300 million of the cost increase on the second phase left unfunded.