Sewage leak leading to major town expense

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced the closure May 17 following an accidental leak of untreated sewage from the three-decade old treatment facility in south end Digby.

As of Monday, the town was planning to hire new workers to monitor the facility, and is looking at purchase of monitoring equipment that costs $250,000 to $300,000.

Even that may not be sufficient, worries the mayor. The town has an engineering firm looking at its treatment plant. “It may come down to a new plant,” he said, and the estimated price tag would be several million dollars. He thinks similar problems may require three to five new plants between here and Greenwood.

The federal environment department requires around-the-clock monitoring of Digby’s treatment facility to ensure it is informed immediately of such spills, and the hiring of staff is a stopgap measure until the electronic gear is in place, said Mackintosh. “We understand why they want monitors, but they’re not going to stop spills and closures,” he said.

Hiring up to four workers to monitor the sewage treatment plant “can be expensive if we have to have them on for months and months,” the mayor said. Cost sharing quandary

The monitoring equipment might be something that the town could cost share with federal and provincial governments, but if the town goes ahead and purchases it immediately, Mackintosh figures the town could be on the hook for the entire bill.

The mayor believes the difficulty for Digby’s treatment facility is related to an agreement signed two years ago between Ottawa and the American government that mandates a new standard of handling contaminated water. “We never heard of this and then a couple of weeks ago, the feds said our plant was not up to date,” said the mayor, yet adds the provincial environment department approved the same facility a few months ago.

He thinks Ottawa is reacting more strongly now because a group of inspectors are arriving from the United States in August to survey the condition of the Annapolis Basin and the waters flowing into it.

If the area doesn’t pass their muster, the inspectors could “stop any sales to the U.S., just like with the mad cow disease.”