Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

IQALUIT (July 26/99) - If all goes according to plan, town toilets in Iqaluit will be flushing into a new waste treatment facility instead of the full sewage lagoon by the fall.

"The highest priority now is signing a contract for the entire project," said Rob Murray, representing Hill-Murray Associates, the Victoria, B.C. firm selected to design and build the new facility.

Murray said his firm has received contribution agreements from the government to fund the $7 million project. The original price for the facility, which will be located near the sewage lagoon, was $6.9 million. Murray said the increase was the result of changes to the specifications listed in the request for proposals. The changes include a 15 per cent increase in the quantity of sewage the facility is designed to treat.

"Once (the contract) is executed, that will be the fixed price of the project," said Murray, referring to the $7 million figure. "There won't be any unforseen increases to the price of the project."

Construction of the project began on July 5, a month behind schedule.

Murray also advised that the town hire an independent engineer to advise it on matters such as completion of and payment for various stages of the project.

Once completed, the enclosed plant will treat sewage using a series of high tech filters. It is being billed by Hill Murray as a far cleaner way of dealing with sewage than the lagoon, which is now operating at capacity.

But the filtration system has not been without its difficulties.

A similar system built by Hill-Murray in Powell River, B.C. has been plagued with problems since it went into operation a year ago. It has yet to achieve British Columbia environmental standards for waste water discharge.

Murray said the problems in Powell River stemmed from two miscalculations -- underestimating the amount of sewage the plant had to deal with and underperformance by the filters used in the plant.

The same filters, the most advanced available, will be used in the Iqaluit plant. But Murray said the company has calculated they will perform only to the standard of the generation of filters before them.

In Powell River, the firm relied on flow figures prepared by an independent consultant, said Murray. It was later determined the device used to measure flows was faulty.

The Powell River official said the consultant had noted in its report that the flows seemed suspiciously low, but that Hill Murray designed for them anyway.

"I think we could have done a better job," said Murray. He said his company and the filter manufacturer have absorbed the expense of dealing with the problems there and added that the plant is designed to deal with about 12 times more sewage than the one to be built in Iqaluit.

Coun. Matthew Spence said the town will be hiring an independent engineer to advise it on the project.

"We do want some reassurance the technology is sound and the problems that happened in Powell River don't occur here," said Spence.