The City of Regina has been presented with an award for outstanding leadership and achievement in wastewater management in response to dangerously high levels of E. coli that closed 28 beaches across the Qu’Appelle Valley more than a decade ago on Canada Day.
The new award from Calling Lakes Ecomuseum, a community-led eco-initiative, recognizes Regina’s response to the 2014 situation, and its ongoing efforts to improve effluent quality, noting that local officials took “bold and necessary action” following the closures that eventually led to a partnership with EPCOR.
“What should have been a day of national celebration became a moment of reckoning — a wake-up call about how we treat our water,” Calling Lakes Ecomuseum stated while presenting the award. “This is a story with a good ending — one that reflects commitment, collaboration, and courage.”
Since the 2014 closures, the group says that Regina has continued to make significant upgrades to its wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), investing some $175 million in the plant around 2015-16. These efforts meant that the plant began to exceed national standards by significantly reducing harmful nutrients like nitrates and phosphates in its discharge.
Subscribe to our Newsletter!
The latest environmental engineering news direct to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Wascana Creek in particular has seen a positive change in its water quality, according to University of Regina experts. In particular, facility upgrades reduced the amount of nitrogen and ammonia flowing downstream in the creek, a tributary of the Qu’Appelle River, which was previously considered to be one of the most polluted creeks in Canada following an Environment Canada study.
By 2021, a University of Regina study that tracked the creek over 10 years found that the WWTP upgrades largely reduced the pollution, with ammonia and levels of total dissolved nitrogen reduced by approximately 85%.
Calling Lakes Ecomuseum members noted that the award is not only a recognition of technical excellence, but a celebration of a “culture shift.”
Efforts by Stantec and Graham Construction saw the Regina WWTP’s capacity expand from 70 to 92 million litres per day. Following upgrades to the primary treatment system, crews also replaced the existing secondary treatment lagoons with a biological nutrient removal process and upgraded the lagoons for peak flow management. Upgrades also included the addition of effluent filtration for phosphorous removal, the replacement of the existing disinfection system with a new UV disinfection system, and upgrades to the existing digesters for biosolids management.
More than 25 billion litres of wastewater is treated at Regina’s wastewater treatment plant each year.
