The Town of Olds has received a relaxation on its wastewater licence due to the regional line currently under construction.
Rather than the town having to meet a hard compliance target for treating the amount of effluent before discharging it into Olds Creek as it had to do in the past, Alberta Environment relaxed its standards, allowing the town to reasonably try to make its best effort on treating effluent given the age of the plant and its condition.
“Basically, with the regionalization coming ahead … (Alberta) Environment has changed our limit to a best practice at the wastewater treatment plant itself. We still have a compliance (target) at our lagoons where we discharge into the creek twice a year,” said Scott Chant, the town's manager of utilities and public works.
Chant said the town still has to document how much effluent it's treating but if it doesn't meet its objective for treatment, it doesn't have to inform Alberta Environment as it did in the past whenever it didn't meet its objectives.
“If we have troubles meeting those at the plant because of the age of the plant and the problems we're having, knowing that in two years we're going to start to pump some of our effluent to Red Deer, (Alberta Environment) felt comfortable in saying, ‘we'll make it as a best effort (in Olds rather) than being a hard compliance point issue,'” he said.
“That's all this amendment (granted in April) did for us. Everything else remained the same,” he said.
Anyone who feels they might be affected by the amendment has 30 days from the time of the notice (May 17) to file an appeal with Alberta Environment.
Chant said if regionalization weren't going ahead Alberta Environment wouldn't have issued the amendment.
“If the regionalization wasn't a reality, they wouldn't be giving us this amendment,” he said.
Chant said the town has been in discussion with Alberta Environment on what options the town has for treating effluent ever since the regionalization was given the go-ahead.
