It’s been over two weeks since Hurricane Dorian swept through the province but the Town of Lunenburg’s wastewater treatment plant still isn’t close to being operational.
As per the latest update from the town, unfiltered sewage continues to be redirected into both the front and back harbours while town staff work at restoring the plant’s systems.
As of press time, Mayor Rachel Bailey said the town’s assessment is ongoing.
“We are making progress in assessing the situation at the wastewater treatment plant and there is some good news in that there are part of the facility that are working,” she told the Saltwire Network.
Town staff are currently awaiting parts to repair the UV disinfection and solids removal systems, both of which were damaged when seawater flooded the plant at the height of the storm on Sept. 7.
However, the plant’s main controls, biofilter and aeration processes all remain operational.
Bailey said getting the plant back up to speed will take a controlled start, a process which methodically checks each of the wastewater pumps stations individually.
The controlled start could take several weeks.
In the meantime, the town is urging residents to be mindful of what they flush as the plant awaits parts.
Coastal Action executive director Brooke Nodding said the town is making the best of an unfortunate situation.
“The Town of Lunenburg has taken the proper steps in addressing this unfortunate but unavoidable situation following the hurricane damage to the wastewater treatment plant,” she wrote via email.
“Providing full transparency on the damaged infrastructure and notifying the public of the untreated/partially treated sewage discharges allows people to take the proper precautions to protect themselves from illness and infection.”
But make no mistake, there are health risks associated with coming in contact with untreated sewage.
As per Nodding, the public should exercise “extreme caution” both on the water and along the shorelines of the harbour as the town works to get the wastewater treatment plant operational.
And the sewage is a concern for several marine businesses in town who work and come in frequent contact with the harbour water.
Bill Flower, a local tour boat operator and harbour activist, said fishermen along the Fishermen’s Wharf are severely exposed by the plant’s outfall pipe which empties beneath their boats.
“We’ve got to don rubber gear just to untie the boat and then wash our hands and gloves to be protected,” he said. “I spend more time scrubbing shit than I do working.”
Flower said the main issue is the location of the outfall pipe but the town has yet to do anything about it.
“All we’ve asked them to do is move the outfall pipe away from humans so when accidents like this happen, they can open the plant up and let it go to a place far enough away from us that we don’t have to work with it,” he said, adding that the placement of the pipe makes for unsafe working conditions.
Previous to the flooding, both Coastal Action and CBCL Engineering submitted reports to the town highlighting the outfall pipe as a source of concern.
Shanna Fredericks, assistant director for Coastal Action, also told the Chronicle Herald back in June that the location of the outfall was an issue.
“The contamination issue around Fishermen’s Wharf and the effluent pipe is caused, in large part, by the location of the pipe in a constricted, poorly flushed part of the harbour,” she said.
In their report, Coastal Action advised moving the outfall further into the harbour but, depending if the town elects to pursue a new state-of-the-art $9.84 million membrane bioreactor (MBR) system, the extension may not be necessary.
The current wastewater treatment plant was built in 2003.
The South Shore Breaker contacted Health Canada to discuss potential health issues to the public but they were unable to comment in time for this article.
