INNOVATION January-February 2017

Award-Winning Environmental Project The Sechelt Water Resource Centre received the 2016 APEGBC Environmental Award for the project’s contributions towards environmental protection, enhancement and sustainable development. The association presented the award at the 2016 Annual Conference. S hown : Nikii Hoglund, District of Sechelt, and Matthew Smith, P.Eng., Urban Systems, who worked on the project, with APEGBC’s Past President Dr. Michael Wrinch, P.Eng., FEC, FGC (Hon.).

are positioned above the wastewater. Their roots dangle into the water to provide habitat for bugs and microbes. This creates an environment that greatly increases biodiversity in the reactors. The increased biodiversity allows for predation, which improves treatment efficiency and reduces the production of bio-solids. The preliminary treatment stage takes place in the headworks, Howorth says. “This is where the incoming raw sewage gets screened. In the case of Sechelt, the water passes through a fine screen, which is a plate with six-millimetre holes, so anything bigger is stopped there. Twigs, trash and other relatively large objects can easily be removed.” The next step removes grit from the material that makes it through the screen. The wastewater then goes through the Organica process for secondary treatment. The Organica fed batch reactor removes pollutants such as ammonia, total suspended solids, and biochemical oxygen demand, the amount of dissolved oxygen that aerobic bacteria and other organisms consume while breaking down organic material in the water—and an indication of the degree of organic pollution in the water. Veolia provided ultrafiltration membranes to remove the solids in the third phase of treatment. With pores 1/1000 th the width of a human hair, the micron-sized membranes remove very small particles, even bacteria, resulting in high-quality reuse water. The fourth phase of the liquid process is disinfection, which relies on ultraviolet light. The project drew on expertise from several firms. Interior Instrument Engineering Services provided the electrical and controls. HPF Engineering introduced the Sewage SHARC and designed the HVAC and plumbing. GeoPacific Consultants did the geotechnical work, and EnerSys Analytics was responsible for the energy modelling. The project architect was Public Architecture, while CWMM Consulting Engineers Ltd. handled the structural engineering. “The greatest challenge we faced was that the wastewater tanks had to be open to allow vegetation to grow out of the suspended baskets into the greenhouse above,” says Don Bergman, P.Eng., CWMM Consulting Engineers Ltd. principal. Designing the walls between the four 23.2-metre-long, 7.2-metre-wide and 6.3-metre-deep rectangular tanks presented challenges, considering the fluid-pressure-derived wall forces. CWMM’s solution was to construct the walkways—to be installed along the top of the tanks—from concrete, and use

them as flanges capable of horizontally spanning the 23-metre lengths of the tanks to the end walls. “The engineering teams were extremely innovative throughout the project,” Nash says. “Any problem that came up was seen as an opportunity to find a solution that would set a precedent that could be used by somebody else on a future project.” v For more information about the Sechelt Water Resource Centre, visit www.sechelt.ca/Live/Water,SewerDrainage/ SecheltWaterResourceCentre.aspx.

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