Holyrood not ‘cheaping out’ on sewage plant upgrades, says Winsor

By Mark Squibb

The Town of Holyrood is moving forward with plans to upgrade its sewage plant.

During last month’s public meeting, council approved a motion to accept the structural report provided by Peak Design regarding the present condition of the plant and that council request Kelco Construction to request quotations for the scope of work presented in the report.

“We’ve worked very hard over the last, my goodness, over a year getting the necessary approvals in place from the Department of Environment to get a bypass implemented and then to have Pardy’s (Waste) remove all the waste in a safe manner and disposed of properly and then complete the inspections, so that’s what this motion is about,” said public works committee chairman Steve Winsor. “Inspections were completed, and the report identified a number of recommendations so that we can repair the infrastructure that we have, and that’ll be that phase. Subsequent phases will be upgrading the treatment equipment at that location.”

Winsor said the work will involve “structural correction” in the oxidation ditch.

The councillor noted the report proposed an optional fix that was “extremely expensive and of limited value.”

“We wanted to spend the taxpayers’ money in a more sensible way and follow their base recommendation for repair, and that’s not in anyway to make anyone think that we cheaped out, that’s not the case at all,” said Winsor.

Council had initially estimated the project’s cost at about $1.4 million, but further review and an expansion of the scope of work pushed that cost to about $2.2 million.

The Town has secured over $2 million in government funding for the project.