Montreal Invests $99 mil in Treating Wastewater

The city of Montreal has announced a $99 million contract to construct the world's largest ozonation wastewater treatment plant

When completed, the ozonation centrelocated at the J.R.-Marcotte water and sewage treatment plant in Pointe-aux-Trembles at the eastern edge of the island will have an estimated cost of$285 million and be able to purify between 2.5 million and 7.6 millioncubic metresof water daily, the equivalent of two Olympic Stadiums full flushed into the St. Lawrence every 24 hours.

Contrary to the current filtration technology, the ozonation system is expected to eliminate 95 per cent of bacteria, in particular E. coli bacteria produced from fecal coliform. It will also eliminatemost viruses, as well as pharmacological drugs and cosmetics that have proliferated in the last 30 years, in part because Montreal is a leader in those industries. The J.R.-Marcotte plant is one of the largest in the world, treating 75 per cent of Montreal's residential and industrial waste water and 50 per cent of Quebec's total.

"Ozone treatment will startin 2018 and willsignificantly improvethe quality of waste water restoredby the island of Montreal to our majestic St. Lawrence River," Mayor Denis Coderre said. "It's a responsible, sustainable choice that will preserve the our aquatic ecosystems and improve public health."

The decision to use an ozonation system came in 2008 under the administration of mayor Gérald Tremblay, in collaboration with Quebec's environmental and agricultural ministries.

City officialsand someenvironmental groups recommended the plan at the time, saying using ozone gas, a powerful cleaner, disinfectant and bleaching agent, is the most effective system to treat the city's industry-heavy effluent, and the least disruptive ecologically.

But McGill professor Ronald Gehr, speaking as a private citizen with 20 years' experience in waste-water treatment, said ultraviolettechnology is more widely used, and could prove considerably cheaper thanozonation, which has never been used on the scale proposed in Montreal.

Up to 85 per cent of the costs of the plant are to be covered under grants provided by the federal and provincial governments as part of their infrastructure programs.

Source: Montreal Gazette

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• Water Treatment & Control
• Waste Water Treatments
• Sewage