ELMIRA ALSO TO RECEIVE NEW WASTE WATER (SEWAGE) TREATMENT

Today's Waterloo Region Record has a front page article describing new technology, methane aerated biofilm reactors (MABR), that are being installed currently at the Hespeler wastewater (sewage) treatment plant. This new technology will be much more efficient and cost effective than the old technolgy which required large amounts of electricity to run blowers producing oxygen through air bubbles. This improved technology will deliver the oxygen passively through strings of biofilm. While I am all in favour of improved technology to either lower treatment costs or to increase treatment efficiency, I believe that Waterloo Region have been well behind the curve in properly and fully treating wastewater prior to its discharge to local creeks and rivers. A prime example has been the decades of reduced river health and aquatic organisms health downstream of the Kitchener wastewater treatment plant near Doon. ........................................................................................................ We are advised in today's article by Catherine Thompson titled "Coming soon: A less wsteful way to treat wastewater", that this new technology will also be arriving at the Elmira wastewater treatment plant. That too is long overdue based upon occasional "spills" or overflows of partially treated sewage entering the already and forever stressed Canagagigue Creek.