Cynthia

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Brazeau County, AB

Located one hour south/west of Edmonton, A.B.

Cold Climate

Context

As aging infrastructure fails, many western Canadian cities, towns and regional governments are looking at investing into treatment of their sewage in new ways that are more environmentally sensitive.

Brazeau County, which oversees a town, a village, and a number of hamlets, has replaced their aging lagoon in Cynthia with a state-of-the-art Solar Aquatics System, complete with high efficiency building, heat recovery, and solar hot water.

Initially water will be re-used on site to start fruit trees and to supplement the fish pond. Future plans include a) selling reclaimed water to the oil and gas industries as frac water and b) accepting sludge and sewage from portable washrooms.

Potentially, the sales of frac water and tipping fees could repay the cost of the SA facility in under ten years.

Project Data

Construction completed:

May 1, 2009

System type:

Tertiary treatment of raw sewage

Average daily flow:

System flow capacity:

44 m3/day

88 m3/day

Detention time:

3 days

Size of facility:

2000 ft2

Discharge Objectives:

BOD: 10 mg/L

TSS: 10 mg/L

Service area:

Hamlet of Cynthia

Collection system:

Existing gravity sewer

Conservation measures:

County installed water meters, residents installed low flow features.

Disposal / reuse:

Sell as “frac” water, & reuse as orchard irrigation and in fish pond.

Resource recovery products:

	Clean water

	Aquatic pond plants

	Ornamental plants

	Compost fertilizer

	Garden bedding plants

Special features:

Passive solar cold climate design, effluent water heat recovery, (air) heat recovery ventilator, active solar water heating, seasonal earth heat storage system.

Funding source:

Brazeau County, Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Alberta Government

Capital cost:

C$1.4 million

O&M cost:

C$14,000 / year