Coupling nutrient and anaerobic treatments to upgrade a Wastewater Treatment Plant in South Bruce

The Municipality of South Bruce plans to upgrade its Teeswater Wastewater Treatment Plant to accommodate population growth, public health concerns over water quality and organic loadings caused by increased sewer discharge from a major local plant. The applicant will build a combined nitrogen, phosphorus and anaerobic digester system to address effluent quality issues, recover more nutrients from biosolids for land application and meet the objectives of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. The effluent from the plant currently discharges into the Teeswater River, which feeds Saugeen River before it enters into Lake Huron. The project’s design includes biological nutrient removal technology to remove nitrogen and phosphorus. A sequencing batch reactor will then treat wastewater from the facility’s anaerobic digesters by directly targeting and eliminating bacterial growth. Energy consumption will be monitored for all equipment and corrective measures will be implemented if certain thresholds are not met. The new plant’s lower sludge production will reduce the volume of solid waste generation. The expansion project aims at enhancing the quality of effluent discharged to Lake Huron by reducing carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand (CBOD5) by 20%, phosphorus by 33% and nitrogen by 50%. By optimizing energy consumption through the integration of new and existing blowers, the project may achieve approximately 20% savings in energy consumption compared to baseline (from 4,665 gigajoules per year down to 3,732 gigajoules per year). As well as the additional revenues from user fees (approximately $350,000 per year) there may be a cost savings of 5–10% through more efficient processing ($50,000 to $100,000 per year). (Project description based on original funding application)