Winnipeg hoping for $589 million boost for sewage treatment plant

The City of Winnipeg is hoping the provincial government's request to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars from one project to another goes through.

Mayor Brian Bowman says that since 2016, the city has been hoping to upgrade the North End Sewage Treatment Plant. The city says the  North End Sewage Treatment Plant could fill 75 Olympic sized swimming pools with the water it treats each day. They say in 2016, the facility filtered 1,959,600 kg of debris like sand, eggshells, floating plastics, sticks and paper, from wastewater, the equivalent weight of 725 full-grown elephants.

“Since 2016, the City of Winnipeg has been alone in its efforts to upgrade the North End Sewage Treatment Plant and today marks a milestone in those efforts to gain significant funding commitments from the provincial and federal governments," Bowman says.

The City is hoping to improve the facility with:

• a new raw sewage pump station
• a new grit and screenings (debris) building
• a biological nutrient removal reactor train with secondary clarifiers
• new high rate clarifiers to provide wet weather flow treatment
• upgraded biosolids process, including thermal hydrolysis, digestion and struvite recovery

Bowman says that a report published on Tuesday says the province plans to transfer approximately $320 Million from the federal Public Transit Infrastructure Stream and redirect it to the Green Infrastructure Stream of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program. The mayor says this will result in $589 million dollars of provincial and federal funding going towards the North End Sewage Treatment Plant.

"I am pleased to see the provincial government joining the City in taking steps to protect the future development of our city and the future of Lake Winnipeg," Bowman says. "Winnipeg's remaining share of federal transit funding would be $203.61 Million. If matched by the Province and the City, this represents $534 Million in much-needed dollars that could be used to invest in public transit in Winnipeg after the Winnipeg Transit Master Plan is completed in 2021 and implementation begins."