A citizens group opposing a proposed deep sewer trunk line to the Gold Bar wastewater treatment plant argues major sewer projects in Edmonton are “100 year decisions” and planning for them should be open to public debate.
But discussion about exactly how that public input should play out — and what level of input is appropriate when dealing with highly technical infrastructure — will go on for at least another year, while debates about the location of the new line will likely drag on for even longer than that.
The new deep sewer line isn’t projected to be needed until 2038 and it could be another decade before a final decision needs to be made on its route, but it has already stirred passionate community debate.
“These are big city-building decisions,” said Jim Rickett, a volunteer with the Save Gold Bar Park Alliance.
“We believe major and significant decisions on sanitary sewer trunk line re-routing need to be made by the city councillors who have been elected and entrusted to make decisions on behalf of the citizens of Edmonton.”
Sewer line connection
The organization takes issue with a decision by a city-led committee to overturn a long-time plan to connect a new deep sewer line from south Edmonton to a wastewater treatment plant in Strathcona County; instead the committee recommended the line go to the Gold Bar wastewater treatment plant.
The committee is made up of representatives from city administration, EPCOR and the development industry, which contributes funds to pay for such lines. It is called the sanitary services strategy fund (SSSF) oversight committee.
Opposition to that decision has been playing out since last year, with groups such as the Save Gold Bar Park Alliance and the North Saskatchewan River Valley Conservation Society speaking out against it. Earlier this week, council’s executive committee re-visited what kind of oversight is needed for the SSSF.
The executive committee asked administration to come back in one year with examples of what decisions should go before councillors and be open to public feedback.
Coun. Ben Henderson noted that technical issues, such as the size of a pipe don’t need to come before councillors. But he acknowledged that “large system based decisions” should.
“At this point, this is not about where that sewer line should go,” Henderson said.
“But it’s brought to light the fact that we didn’t have good, transparent ways of discussing and debating where these kind of big decisions get made.”
Executive committee also asked for options on a process to re-examine the decision to re-route the new deep sewer line.
At this point, this is not about where that sewer line should go.– Ben Henderson, Edmonton councillor
Rickett said the decision to re-visit the oversight process doesn’t go far enough. His group wants the SSSF’s initial decision on re-routing to be declared invalid and to be removed from the city website.
“We think it would be in good faith and restore public trust if city council would move to deem that decision invalid,” he said.
Epcor, which runs the Gold Bar wastewater treatment facility, stressed the proposed new trunk line wouldn’t take new “flows” to Gold Bar, since the plant already handles sanitary flows from south Edmonton.
Craig Bonneville, director of the Gold Bar waste water treatment plant, also noted EPCOR was not on the SSSF committee when the decision was initially made to re-route the new trunk to Goldbar. It now has a seat at that table.
“We will work with whatever governance model council decides to to have the oversight committee operate under,” said Bonneville.
“Aside from having a seat on that committee, we’re stakeholders in the process and in terms of the wastewater plants, we provide the oversight committee with information on capacities of, for example, Gold Bar to treat wastewater now and in the future.”