If Ottawa enacts regulations for wastewater to go through primary and secondary treatment, the province will have a big bill on its hands.
“It’s an expensive proposition,” said Environment Minister Mark Parent yesterday. “It’s something that we’re in favour of … but we would need some extra help.”
At the end of September, federal Environment Minister John Baird announced the government would be setting tough new standards for sewage treatment to prevent raw sewage from being dumped into lakes, rivers and oceans.
He said the regulations would be published sometime this year and the government will provide funding to provinces from the Building Canada infrastructure fund.
James Campbell, communications project manager for Halifax’s Harbour Solutions project said the city hasn’t even finished installment of the advanced primary sewage treatment, never mind the additional secondary treatment the government is going to mandate.
But he said the regulations likely wouldn’t come into effect for quite a while.
“My understanding, it could be 10 years, it could be longer, that’s what I heard last year anyway,” he said.
