Paradise to upgrade wastewater plant in phases

By Mark Squibb, The Shoreline

The Town of Paradise will upgrade the St. Thomas Line wastewater treatment plant in phases as the project proved too costly to do all at once.

The town received $18.3 million in cost-shared funding to upgrade the plant to a secondary treatment plant to comply with municipal effluent regulations. That amount proved only enough to cover a portion of the upgrades.

“Owner-advisor services for this project was awarded to RV Andersen Associations Ltd. in 2022, however, through the design process, it was soon determined that the funding amount would not cover the full scope of the wastewater treatment plant upgrades,” explained councillor Erin Furlong. “A project amendment was submitted to the funding partners to split the project into three phases, with the current funding amount being dedicated to Phase 1 only. This is currently under review.”

Furlong added that funding has been extended to 2030, and that the town has authorization to operate the treatment plant as is until 2040.
Council approved a change order on June 2 to cover the cost of splitting the project into phases.

“Due to the project being divided into multiple design-build phases to be implemented over an extended time frame, rather than a single construction phase, there will be longer exposure periods for excavation, slopes, native soils, which were not contemplated in the original geo-technical investigative report,” said Furlong. “As a result, the existing geotechnical investigative report requires a revision and expansion to address conditions associated with phased construction and prolonged exposure.”

The change order, the fifth for the project, was approved in the amount of $2,875 HST included.
“So, in the grand scheme of things it’s not a huge amount of money,” noted Furlong.