The City of Moncton, New Brunswick, has added a temporary filtration system utilizing activated carbon to combat the growing risk of cyanobacteria from algal blooms, while the city faces supply delays for its permanent solution at the treatment plant level.
Moncton council approved a $17 million construction contract in spring 2025 to expand the water treatment plant with a new ozone and powdered activated carbon system to address cyanobacteria. While they wait for equipment, Moncton officials have faced changing weather patterns that are resulting in earlier seasonal algal blooms, a development that convinced the council to invest $280,000 on the interim filtration solution.
“As you know we’ve been at this for a number of years in terms of upgrading the ability to treat water,” Ward 2 Councillor Charles Léger said before council approved the spending on August 18. “The [algal] bloom is earlier this year and so hopefully this temporary measure will bring us into the actual plant that is being built and will be finalized.”
When blue-green algae blooms first appeared in 2017, Moncton was caught off guard. It didn’t have a water treatment plant that could handle them. The plant, commissioned in 1999, was built with technology and treatment capabilities informed by 20 years of historical data about the watershed, which is considered rather pristine with stable water quality, and without some of the challenges and contamination risks faced by many other cities where treatment capabilities are much deeper and advanced.
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While the primary purpose of the permanent pretreatment system at the plant would serve as a safeguard against cyanotoxins, the technology will also be used to assist in addressing other contamination risks, whether it’s forest fires, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicle accidents, planes, or anything else that could impact watershed quality.
Only a very small proportion of cyanobacteria produce toxins. Between 80 to 100 different compounds have been discovered in these blooms, and all have different levels of toxicity. But blooms in the region have had an impact before. In July 2018, three dogs died after being in or near the Saint John River in Fredericton. In humans, the World Health Organization says exposure to these toxins can cause serious liver damage and neurotoxicity.
