Water/Wastewater Plant Resiliency Plan

The Town of Carleton Place is developing a resiliency plan for their municipal water and wastewater treatment plants in order to understand the impacts of climate change on these facilities and outline a plan to reduce the water and wastewater treatment plant’s vulnerability to these impacts. This plan will be prepared by analyzing rainfall and flow data to build a climate change model which will assist in assessing the vulnerability of each component of the water and wastewater treatment plants. Climate change is altering rainfall patters in the Town and this has created risks for the water and wastewater treatment plants. For example, in 2016, hot dry weather created drought conditions which created operational problems for the water treatment plant because of increased water demand, low river flows, and increased risk of algae blooms in the source water. In contrast, sustained rainfall in the spring of 2017 caused flooding and produced two separate spring peak flow events. Infiltration into the sanitary system caused sustained high flows at the wastewater treatment plant putting pressure on the plant's ability to adequately treat all flows.The water and wastewater resiliency plan will be developed using a public consultative process. In Phase 1 of the plan, the Town of Carleton place will assemble current and historical flow data for the water and wastewater treatment plans; in phase 2 they will assemble data to predict the future demands at the plants; in phase 3 they will carry out a vulnerability assessment and resiliency assessment for the plants which will be presented to the public and endorsed by Council. The final action plan will likely include a combination of system rehabilitation, controls on consumption and component upgrades to more efficient technology. In the final phase of the project, the results of the vulnerability assessment will be used to amend the Town’s Master Plans for water and wastewater and relevant by-laws following the required consultation processes. The final Water/Wastewater Resiliency Plan is expected to ensure the water and wastewater treatment plants are able to adequately treat anticipated flows under all conditions, which is a critical priority for the Town of Carleton Place.