New Schomberg Water Pollution Control Plant will meet stringent phosphorus limits

Project staff (l-r): Steve Alford, Salman Alvi, Mike Liszega, Vanja Jovic, Shawn Cleary, Rob Cochrane, Grace Ning, Rebecca Pringlemeir, and Marek Braczek.

Piling at Schomberg Water Pollution Control Plant

Aeration tanks, blower room and RAS/WASStation

Adopted by site rep. Steve Alford, a mother goose built her nest next to the site trailer.

Located in the Regional Municipality of York in Ontario between Toronto and Barrie, Schomberg is a village with a population of about 7000. The village had experienced significant growth, to the extent that its wastewater treatment facility was operating at capacity. As additional development in the village was put on hold pending upgrading of the treatment plant, the Regional Municipality decidedto replace the village’s existing facultative lagoons and recirculating sand filters with a new mechanical wastewater treatment plant to provide additional capacity to meet its growth.

The Regional Municipality retained Associated Engineering to complete the design of a new extended aeration treatment plant. The treatment plant will include fine screening, vortex grit separators, grit classification, aeration, clarification, sand filtration, and ultraviolet disinfection. Alum will be added for phosphorus removal and waste-water will be filtered to meet Ontario Ministry of Environment limits of 0.1 milligram per litre for phosphorus. Effluent will be discharged to the Schomberg River.

Sludge will be thickened in a gravity thickener, and stored in a sludge holding tank. Thickened sludge will be trucked to York Durham Duffin Creek Water Pollution Control Plant for sludge stabalization.

Associated Engineering’s design team met some interesting challenges on the design of this $15.2 million facility. The new plant is being built in a portion of one of the existing facultative lagoons.This required that the lagoon be scraped to a clean base and the construction of a new berm in the lagoon to allow the continued use of the remaining portion of the lagoon for treatment during construction. Construction of the treatment plant began in January this year in the north portion of the lagoon and the south portion has been returned to service as a facultative lagoon.