The District of Houston has received numerous inquiries about the ability of the district accepting hauled wastewater and what the cost associated with it would be, if a service were made available.
“Presently we do not have any policy or procedures or bylaws that reflect accepting that [service],” commented Michael Glavin, Chief Administrative Officer for the District of Houston.
Glavin reviewed the matter and found that the district wastewater treatment plant has an authorized discharge permit for up to 3200 cubic meters per day. The average daily discharge rate is currently between 600 to 1400 cubic meters each day,depending on the time of year.
In effect, the district is capable of accepting an additional 1800 cubic meters per day of hauled wastewater, without exceeding the discharge permit.
However, there are some concerns which require investigation.
Bacteria, location of the dumpsite, monitoring of the delivery and costs were issues discussed at the meeting.
“If there is a contaminated product in there, what is our response to that?” asked councillor Tim Anderson.
“We could loose our bacteria in our system, and that would be very costly to us. Secondly these people will have insurance,”replied Glavin.
“How many gallons is the [equalization chamber]?” asked councillor Rick Lundrigan, “I’m just wondering if there is the volume in there to handle it?”
“It would be a controlled dump. They are not going to open the floodgate and just let it go,” responded Glavin.
Councillor Lundrigan also asked what would be some reasons as to why a load would be refused, to which Glavin responded elements containing petroleum.
“What we are looking for here is [a service for] outside work camps, the idea is that they come in, so I am just curious as to what it would cost and are we charging enough?” asked mayor Shane Brienen.
The fees for this type of service range from as low as $100 per load and up to $32 per cubic meter. In 2015, the district’sWastewater Treatment Plant processed 407,040 cubic meters of influent, at a cost of $200,508 to treat the wastewater.Which equates to a baseline of $0.49 per cubic meter for the district of factor in additional costs such as employee time administration time, processing feeds, and equipment cycle time. A fee of $2.50 per cubic meter was determined to be adequate to charge users.
Council voted in favour of the recommendation for staff to continue to develop a policy and procedure congruent with the bylaws.