Big, bold, brash… The circular water economy, and the future of water – EOtec2023

Moderator: Kalpna Solanki
Panel: Bruce Caister (left), Tom Robinson (center) and Brian Bedford (right)

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Okay good morning everyone so welcome to our big bold Brash the circular water economy and the future of water session um I’ll just um introduce our panelists there’s um we’ve got Brian Bedford from the Ministry of Municipal Affairs here Brian Bedford is the executive director of local government infrastructure and

Finance and Deputy inspector of municipalities with the BC Ministry of Municipal Affairs Brian has a background in environmental science and a focus on sustainable and resilient infrastructure his role with the province for the past 15 years is administering infrastructure funding programs for BC local governments and First Nations encouraging Innovative infrastructure

Solutions oversight of the local government financial system and supporting the development of asset management and sustainable service delivery he’s been involved with small and largescale core public infrastructure projects throughout the province and work that has resulted in the implementation integrated resource recovery techniques piloting of uh natural assets and climate resilience

Brian is a founding member of asset management BC and a board member with Rizo Center for mobilizing Innovation and is the ministry representative to the eocp board so next we have kpna kpna salanki um is president and CEO of the environmental operator certification program Canada’s first water and wastewater facility classification and

Environmental operator certification program kPa is passionate about the water and wastewater industry and feels fortunate to work with a fabulous team and board of directors she holds a Bachelor of Science and a master of Business Administration from Simon Fraser University a diploma in environmental health from British Columbia Institute of Technology and she

Has recently completed a Harvard Business School program on strategy kPa also enjoys volunteering she currently sits on two boards in her spare time you will find kPa diving somewhere warm kaying cycling or hiking with her three dogs and on the slopes in the winter so next we have um Bruce Caster

From kcx engineering uh Bruce has many years in the water and wastewater industry operating a variety of plants in Municipal and Industrial settings he came to BC from Manitoba in 2010 where he was employed with the Vancouver Convention Center to operate the a class 4 Blackwater recycling facility he

Relocated back to Manitoba during the pandemic but remains actively involved with a convention Center’s Blackwater plant as a private contractor to provide oversight and operator Services last but not least is Tom Robinson Tom is a senior Wastewater engineer and project manager with more than 30 years of Municipal wastewater treatment planning risk management

Design construction and commissioning experience in the past 10 years Tom has led multifirm Wastewater facility design teams in the design of Greenfield or complex retrofits exceeding 150 million Tom uses his strong communication and management skills to keep teams client focused and provide excellent service so with that we will start the

Session thank you terara so you might notice that we’re we have three men on this on the stage here and and Megan is not here and Megan had a family emergency and I reached out to some contacts at Associated engineering and said hey this is your opportunity to

Shine and Tom was either volunteered or he volunteered I’m not sure but we’re very happy to have him with us thank you so our topic our this session is big bold Brash the circular water economy and the future of water we Canada is considered to be for

The most part we think of it as a Land of Plenty when it comes to water we’ve typically gone with a model of take make consume and dispose yes every year when we think about drought and and conservation efforts and so on we we do some of that but you can’t

Always out conserve population growth the success of water conservation programs is often measured by reductions in per capita consumption before for static utility that does not anticipate future growth reducing per capita water used decreases Supply maintenance and environmental costs so we need to think a little bit outside

The box we need to think about a transition to a circular water economy which requires breaking down silos and fostering collaboration amongst all stakeholders although effective water stewardship is so important for thriving Industries and communities and industries may be major customers or users of the products from water and wastewater utilities industrial water

Stakeholders have not traditionally had a prominent platform to discuss solutions to the water challenges or have and neither have they been included in conversations with Municipal Utilities about sustainable Water Solutions we need to give more thought to the circular water economy and a consideration of closed loop systems

With the development of more Diversified resource options efficient Transport Systems and rethinking of waste water as a resource rather than Waste Water Utilities have been early adopters in general of Technologies and practices that support the circular water economy driven by increasingly stringent regulations informed by breakthrough science and competed to respond to

Climate change impacts and urbanization so that’s just to give you a bit of a background in terms of what we’re thinking about here really think about breaking down those silos working collaboratively and really thinking about a closed loop system so I’m just going to open it up with some questions

To the panel so first of all and and in no particular order anyone can go from the panel so the first question is what are your thoughts on the belief that you can’t outc conserve popul growth any anyone would like to take that well maybe I can just start off by

Saying that um with the convention center and what we’re doing there with blackw recycling plant just to give you an example today we we’re hosting two conferences and there’s probably anywhere about 6,000 people in the building so we’re consuming water but the beauty of that

Is is we are a closed loop system so any waste water that is generated is going directly into my plant and being sent out into the building again so can you outc conserve population growth you know it’s I don’t know if I can really thoroughly answer that

Question other than to say that what it does is maybe highlights the the importance of capturing all your waste water maybe not all of it but certainly the domestic stuff the domestic streams you know industrial might be another thing altogether but uh at least do that

Or consider that um I think that’s an option that BC really has to consider in these you know these Changing Times I mean I’ve only been out here 13 years and the climate has changed so much since I arrived in 2010 like it’s uh it’s uh it’s quite astounding thank you Tom

O’Brien I um I was born and and raised in Vancouver and um they’ll let you guess what generation I would fit into but the the the idea of um of water was always uh in BC was something that um came from uh snow pack and high in the

Mountains and and uh we didn’t really have to do very much to it uh we were we were blessed with that but we sort of took credit for that in a certain way as well which probably wasn’t really earned or deserved and and we used it and we

Disposed of it and and we were pretty happy with that Arrangement the the idea of of reusing that especially you know in in some sort of personal way was was really not a part of our thinking at all I remember the first time I was in

California and in in one of the Orange County plants where they actually were U doing um you know closing that loop from a wastewater treatment plant um uh it was an indirect pable reuse where they would put it in the ground and and it would be extracted in about a year but

But it was an interesting exercise for me to to to to taste that water and I I I throw that out there as a bit bit of a challenge because um because for my generation the idea of drinking something that had gone through a wastewater treatment plant was was was

Kind of out there bit uncomfortable but it’s going to take baby steps like this um uh for for the public as a whole to to to gradually gain acceptance uh and and to get comfortable with the idea um you know and and you mentioned also on the industrial side you know that’s

That’s going to be a different challenge uh industry is going to be making decisions you know on a fiscal basis and uh when when reclaimed water is is uh you know the same cost or or lower or at least close that’s when um they’ll probably be more inclined to look at it

Seriously and see if it can meet their needs uh it’s interesting from a wastewater treatment perspective because I think we’ve been doing Wastewater uh re reclaimed water in various um capacities inside wastewater treatment plants for for years and years and years um for applications that don’t require

Portable water but moving out of that um has uh it has it’s going to take some um uh some getting used to and and take people a while to to get more comfortable with that I have more thoughts on that later but I’ll pass it to Brian thanks um certainly see that

Water conservation uh can only take a so far um there’s still definitely a lot of room to go there because our our water conservation per cap or water use per capita in Canada is still um well above our European uh counterparts um so our daily habits of individuals can help

Extend the water that’s already in the pipes um we’ve seen some good success in various communities over you know the past 10 years where they’ve faced a lot of growth uh I know of one Okanagan community that you know they they’re actually using less water they on a

Daily basis than they were 10 years ago and they’ve had significant growth in that time by implementing a variety of water conservation me measures in public education so that’s you know one step um you know Universal metering leak detection or a few other steps to add

Add into that mix but then we need to take as noted you know the next step and making more efficient and effective use of or reuse of treated effluent and um on the industrial side you know in the piece we’ve got Dawson Creek treating in partner ship with Oney oil and gas

Companies producing treated effluent to be used in the fracking industry instead of taking it from the natural Waters or Municipal Water so small steps small pilot projects here and there um and as we densify you know you see it in Vancouver and you’re starting to see it

More on the island and in the oak augen um you know we need to start paying attention to storm water and rainwater reuse um because we’re hardscaping more and more of the landscape in that dense dense areas which presents an opportunity to grab that rainwater and I

Think maybe here bit about that from from Bruce today so to grab that rain water and put it to reuse as well so not just focusing on reusing waste water but also focusing on what can we do with the the rain water coming out the sky and

The in the urban Landscapes um so little little variety of things that all need to be um added into sort of our business as usual as we move forward thank you so Bruce has given an example of treating Wastewater as a resource rather than waste um with regards to the convention center West

Where the effluent from the facility that Bruce runs is used for flushing the toilets used for watering the rooftop gardens any other example similar to that you can think of um either Tom or or Brian sure I can jump in with a couple and then hand it over to you Tom um you

Know and this is not not a municipal example per se but uh development in Victoria about 2007 doy green you may have heard of it uh it’s on a Brownfield industrial land it’s a multi- uh unit uh multi-purpose density uh development I can’t remember the the number of towers

And there’s a few retail spaces and office spaces part of it sits on top of a tertiary treatment wastewater treatment plant and the effluent from that is used to um add to the the water course that runs through through the um the site but it’s also all the units within all the condos

Their toilets are flushed with it their washing machines wash their clothes with it um and you can sit there and have a coffee on top of the wastewater treatment plant um any given day of the week so I do that anyways yeah I know I’m this is the

Crowd that I was like we have coffee and waste water treat plant every day anyways what are you talking about but it’s a it’s an eye opener for the general public to sit there and realize they’re sitting on top of a wastewater treatment plant it’s a great example

It’s from 2007 we don’t have a lot more examples yet and we’re 15 years later so it’s a little disappointing in that front so more push on that side um and then we’ve got some examples around the province where you know we we use reusing effluent uh for irrigation

Purposes whether it’s parks and golf courses or in cran Brook where they irrigate the uh Ranch Land the pasture lands for the cattle um so those are you know it’s an effective use you’re you’re using reusing the effluence you’re not having to uh discharge it to a water

Body and it’s it’s offsetting other demands either whether it’s irrigation water um coming out from a groundwater STP Source or other or offsetting what might have been drawn from a municipal source so you know there’s there’s some good examples um nasp has uses it for irrigation in their public park

Facilities and such so you know there’s there’s little Snippets around the province where this is underway and it’s been underway for quite some time so it’s it’s a matter of sort of bringing that back and Shining a light on it so people realize that hey this is this is

Doable this is normal it’s within regulatory environment and it’s it’s it’s it can help offset um you know day-to-day cost and and has has a can have a reasonable return on investment yeah I don’t have too much to add to that I um examples uh like the

Convention center in do Side Green are are great um you know to to really make a dent you’re looking you know you’d really like to find large scale um systems and and certainly around here with the drought that you’re facing we would you know irrigation of of uh uh

You know agricultural land seems to be a bit of a win um and of course there has to be some care taken with that but that’s um um you know that’s that’s probably an area that we could push on and make some progress I would think

Okay thank you and I just wanted to I think I’ve made a comment about this before you know that I’m a a bit of a geek and I watch science fiction and read science fiction and it it’s not out of the realm of possibilities if anyone

Has read Dune or watched the movies the fman wear these still suits and they basically recycle the water within their waist and within their suits and that is their drinking water and when I say that that is not outside the realm of possibilities that’s kind of what happens with the International Space

Station they don’t take thousands and thousands and thousands of liters and then just dispose of it there is a lot of reclamation that takes place and the water gets reused interestingly a few years ago when I talked to someone at the Ministry of Health with regards to a new certification that is being

Offered in California and Nevada that is related to direct and indirect portable reuse and I said do you think there’s an appetite for that in BC and I was told oh no we’re fine we’re okay but that was that wasn’t that long ago that was maybe

Seven years ago but here we are we’ve got drought situation right now I’m sending out emails to water suppliers going can you let us know how you’re doing there are communities in Texas and California who have both direct and indirect pable reuse so it’s happening already and you know sometimes you kind

Of go like this that little bit of that yuck factor in terms of e like who wants to drink stuff that comes out of the sewage treatment plant or the wastewater treatment plant but in a way it’s happening already because what is discharged into a water course Upstream

Is very often used by a community Downstream as its water source I read a book recently I think it’s called the human Essentials if anyone’s interested in Wastewater it’s actually really interesting I know bit of a geek but anyway and it talks about how the riv

Ofms in in England when you drink water in London if you drink water from from the top it is treated by T’s water that water has likely gone through nine guts so imagine that so getting back to the panel here Brian why is the circular water economy important to

Government well um this we’re having a little bit of a government Spiel so bear with me S where I’ve given that some of those government speak speaking those that I need to address I’ll try to make them light and interesting but you know the circular economy is essentially not

New it’s just new branding right it’s new branding for what can be done what is being done and it’s not a bad way to kind of catch the attention of the current current folks of course it remains both a challenge and an opportunity for our core public infrastructure um you know

Our existing setups of our infrastructure that’s been built over the last 70 years or more is essentially in our watersheds dehydration infrastructure despite how it Waters our individual people and our homes we take water out at the top of the Watershed we put it in giant straws pipes and we flow

It down we use it we put it back in pipes and we discharge it at the end of The Watershed we remove that water from its ecosystem service it doesn’t flow through that Watershed as it used to so if we thought about this years ago we would have built our water treatment

Plant and our wastewater treatment plant next to each other not upstream and downstream so that’s going to be hard to rectify because of all the distribution and conveyance um so we need to think more broadly about how to reuse that affluent um so you know it’s of interest

To government um the province has been supporting quote unquote sort of circular economy projects for quite some time through our infrastructure funding programs going back to 2005 with the gas tax Innovation fund where we funded a number of projects that reused efflu in different ways continuing through

Project programs that succeeded it in in the years like small communities fund clean water Wastewater fund and the current tranch of the investing in Canada infrastructure program uh particularly the last intake of the Environmental Quality program had a focused section on that value ad of of reuse of um resources from waste reuse

Of affluent Etc so definitely and then so Municipal fairs has been kind of pushing it along through the infrastructure funding program sector but it’s gotten uh the attention of government more broadly and Ministry environment came out uh not too long ago with the big clean BC push and so clean

BC is The province’s Branding for a whole Suite of programs around sort of becoming more effective and efficient uh of use of our environmental resources um and a key component of that is using the terminology you know BC is building a circular economy focused on

I’m G to read my notes sorry focused on sharing reusing repairing and or recycling our resources this this approach is to pollute less um keep uh reduce use of our landfills more efficient use of our resources the vision of clean BC is a future where the BC economy Embraces the

Principles of circularity waste prevention resource efficiency to support a clean growth economy that reduces emissions underpinned by effective core public infrastructure and has a fair inclusive approach across economic sectors principles are around things like design out waste from the services we use use resources at their highest economic and environmental

Values through his life cycle ensure ghd reduction Environmental Protection and uh regeneration and protection of the environment at land and enable and encourage Innovation so it is a key priority of this government it will be when you have this high level high overarching government um objectives

Like clean BC what it helps is provide an opportunity for um creation of programs that sit within it that interface with local governments and First Nations around infrastructure that supports that further so as we move forward and develop new programs it gives us the ability to embed more um

Priorities around uh reuse U of reuse of resources um through our through our infrastructure and through upgrades to our Pro through through the projects through the programs so all in some you know Now’s the Time It’s of interest to the government uh and ideally we’ll see more of it coming out through through

Programs that are more directly related to uh um sort of the next trunch of of uh infrastructure funding so just staying with you Brian in terms of you you mentioned dox Side Green are there can you discuss any recent initiatives related to this that government has supported um in there there’s this when

We did the last intake which had sort of of the Environmental Quality substream of the investing in Canada infrastructure program um there was a an added section that was focused as I mentioned on on resource reuse and recovery and so we’ve we’ve got programs and there’s also the sorry there’s this

A parallel one called the clean BC communities fund which was looking at primarily focused on ghd reduction and so in both those programs we’re prior prioritizing prog project applications that had that um circular economy kind of component added to it um you know there’s uh project uh what I’m

Struggling with here is some of them have been announced and are public and some are not so we’ve got some Wastewater projects looking at reuse of affluent we’ve got Energy Efficiency projects we’ve got um heat recovery projects um whether or not this one’s announced you know it’s already in

There’s parts of it already in in in function here in Vancouver right Southeast Falls Creek grabbing the heat from the list station and heating Olympic Village uh co-generation creating electricity and heat um from what you was now being branded as renewable natural gas we called biomethane right so those kind of

Projects are are getting funding from government programs to to be implemented over the next few five 10 years so to speak um you know there’s also projects where there’re I guess one thing around renewable natural gases is a little newer from you know whether on-site use

Or Coen is upgrading it to then you know sell it off and put it into the forest grid so these things are all starting to happen at um on projects across the province thank you um Bruce there’s another project that you’re involved with as well um with regards to kind of

Thinking outside the box with regards to water could you tell us a bit about that a few years ago uh the CEO of pavco approached my business partner and I Jamie Moore uh to look at designing and uh constructing a rainwater harvesting system in BC

Place so we sat down in the food court right across from the convention center one day with pen and paper and drw it what we wanted um and I should maybe just say prior to that we toured uh some known rainwater harvesting system sites one in abbottsford in particular that we

Uh that we went out to see in their new um Community Sports Center um they were happy with it uh we looked at their design we took what we liked and then we went back and designed what we thought would work best for us and what I really liked about the BC

Place location was that roof that magnificently huge 11 hectar roof which is high enough up it’s not really an attractive bird Roost and so the one thing we did is part of our due diligence is we took samples of the rain water coming off that roof and not initially just when it

Starts raining but maybe 20 minutes after the roof’s been washed off take those samples send them off to ALS Labs tell us what’s in it well they came back with virtually no feal coliforms in it again because it’s not a bird Roost um suspended solids or dissolved solids

Virtually nothing um the only thing of concern maybe was the pH just because it’s it’s pure water it’s rainwater but regardless we knew we had a good pristine Source there and so with that we designed our plant around that um to start off with there’s two um two

Tanks two sisters as we refer to them total capacity about 22,000 gall so the water enters the rain water from the roof enters the first tank after it’s been raining for about 10 minutes um then the the supply valve opens passes through a filter goes into a tank fills those

Systemns right Downstream from that is a little uh uh pump skid that we’ve got which contains resert pumps UV lamps and uh liquid chlorine um control system and that is primarily to to Reser the water in the in the SNS just to keep of chlorine residual in it and to give

It an extra level of uh disinfection through the UVS plus an extra fil filtration step and so this thing this this recirculation unit is designed to run for four hours or for 45 minutes every six hours and that just keeps a chlorine residual in the cisterns for

When the water is called upon for use in the uh in the facility and right now they’re only using the water for Fel field maintenance like when you get a football game you put the lime down the field markings then you got to wash that off for the soccer game for different

Markings that’s really all it’s being used for now but what we have found is the quality of water that comes out of this thing is very comparable to what comes out of your TAP I’m not I’m not suggesting for a minute that you can drink it but the quality is good enough

That now they want to take it to the next step and start uh using it to supply their washrooms much like what we’re doing at the convention center so it’s a system that’s where very proud of works very well does exactly what’s intended and we may have an opportunity

To expand on that and I will just add uh there is another client uh they they operate Office Buildings around the Lower Mainland and in Vancouver here and we’re working with them right now we’ve designed a system for them they had an existing system which just was not like it was very poorly

Designed and they weren’t even using it it was just that poorly designed so we came in there assessed everything designed what we thought would work best for them it’s it’s now at the stage where they’re constructing what we’ve recommended in terms of the individual skids that they’re going to

Need for the rainwater harvesting system and we expect to be installing that sometime this fall so it’s it’s those are worthwhile projects I mean rain from the sky I mean water from the sky it’s basically free if you don’t have to treat it too much I mean you do got to

Do your due diligence Rainwater that has touched the ground you maybe want to avoid that but in our particular case with BC Place and this other location that we’ve got here where the water is coming from the roof it’s not touching vegetation you’re getting no natural colors or anything like that um

Yeah thank you and just moving on with that that’s a great example um what about you think about you I’m sure with your travels and so on you’ve come across situations where other countries that are more parched than we are have come up with innovative solutions anything you would like to

Share in terms of what you’ve seen that maybe some ideas that we should think about emulating here I’ll jump in here I there are there are other examples from areas that are more parts for sure I mean I think Singapore was one of the first um uh

Countes city states that that uh um took it really seriously and and produced what they called new water from the Changi Wastewater facility and that’s because they’re so small geographically but with a large population and completely dependent on on neighboring countries that would Supply them with water and that’s a an uncomfortable

Reality uh for them you know I think interesting listening to to Bruce and so on um it takes creativity it takes a little bit of outside the box thinking um and I think part of that creativity that that we we look for and that we’ve built in some into some of our projects

Is that um uh phasing is is a part of the creativity there may not be a reason to um to build something now but if it’s part of a longer term plan and and you’re bearing you know a pipeline put a reclaim water line right beside it uh to

Uh to to take reclaimed water back from the Wastewater Plant into an urban area um and and build the system in um in phases and and and and fund it you know make sure that that that that that happens as a part of the plan and that’s

And that’s a tough thing to do in days where you know we’re seeing costs rise so uh dramatically and uh and governments are struggling to um you know to even build the basics but um uh you know I think creativity and and the willingness to to

Build in phases is part of that puzzle it may it may help get us part of the way there good point the being prepared doing things in phases done it in a lot of other type of projects um but to C’s question about other places in the world Australia

Australia the Gold Coast is a fairly densely populated but very parched area uh all new developments over there have um pable water pipe going to the house and a reclaimed water pipe going to the house reclaim water is for everything external it’s for washing clothes it’s for flushing the toilet so they’re

Purple piped houses right um they’ve also in so along with the the infrastructure they’ve instituted lots of um public education programs and intervention programs I call it intervention because whereas here in BC we’ve been under in clean BC we’ve been pushing people to uh make their homes more energy efficient but it’s all

Voluntary right you get an advisor to come in they do an assessment of your house you go off and you hire contractors you do some work advisor come backs and checks it and you get a rebate great but it’s it’s based on whether the homeowner is interested if

The home owner can afford it Etc with water in the Gold Coast they had a plumbing version of this program except it wasn’t voluntary if you were a high water user they would send a team of plumbers into your house change out leaky faucets change out High use uh

Toilets replace things and then you know walk away with leaving you with a much more efficient water efficient home um maybe not very palatable here yet um but maybe an idea that we should think about in the future thank you Bruce anything from you on that yeah

Uh no I don’t think I have much add on that okay so one other country that uh I’ve heard quite a bit about I haven’t been there um but in terms of water conservation and really thinking of uh Wastewater as a resource is Israel and when you think about it this is this

Tiny little country and predominantly desert and yet when I lived in the UK we would get so much produce that was grown in Israel interestingly like oranges Peppers whole bunch of different things and um so at had a conference at the Canadian Water and Wastewater Association met met a delegation from

Israel and the amount of um processes they have in place to conserve water is phenomenal but also the use of reclaim water and also the use of biosolids for fertilizer so that whole cycle is being addressed in terms of that um the other thing also with regards to um some other

Aspects in terms of energy recovery when I was at the Colona wastewater treatment facility the heat from that facility is actually used to um heat parts of the Okanagan College campus so even just some of those things instead of letting that heat just go into the environment actually reusing it for

Buildings so getting back to the panel here what can utilities do in terms of thinking outside the box say our operators our utilities what can they do in terms of this focus on really getting getting away from that thinking that we’ve always had of take make consum and

Dispose I’ll just jump in with a smaller scale example than Colona right I remember having a site visit to the um water control valve at the reservoir for Peach Land up in the hills behind the community and it’s quite somewhat remote particularly in the winter um and so it

Used to be all manual they wanted to move it to skada it doesn’t have power up there so they put in two little microh Hydro generators on it enough to heat the place and to run the skada so small scale simple things but huge benefit on efficiency for Staffing for

Use of the facility um so it doesn’t always have to be the big we’re going to heat a campus or we’re going to heat a sweet of buildings or we’re going to treat use effluent like those small scale things will add up to efficiencies that are beneficial I’ll leave that

There yeah one of the things that I’ve noticed over the past 20 years is that uh when infrastructure is built to um you know to contribute to this question um it’s it’s operated with a certain amount of enthusiasm for the first few years uh but it’s not a surprise

Sometimes anymore to go in and see that something’s no longer being used it’s uh uh it was a struggle it wasn’t cost effective uh things broke down all all kinds of different reasons um and and a lot of times it was maybe because things were done just a little bit cheap on on

The uh on the install initially um so it’s it’s um it’s tough It’s going to take commitment it’s going to take creativity to find new things but when we’ve when we’ve made the effort to to uh to step out and do something uh got to find a way to keep that working

Stepping away from progress like that is uh is costly um it’s bit demoralizing as well so we got to find ways to to uh to keep building on that that’s just one thought that comes up to to my mind on that uh well the one thing one

Experience I can add to that is uh years ago I was the uh environmental manager of a large uh potato processing plant in Portis La Prairie Manitoba my hometown and our Wastewater operations in included a 22,000 cubic meter Anor robic digestor and I was introduced to this thing first time I’d ever operated

It a digestor right from infancy that is building up the biomass introducing the Wastewater to it and then running this thing to the point where it’s now producing biog gas methane if you will well for the first little while we were flaring this stuff off to the atmosphere and uh but the

Beauty of the whole system is it was designed that that natural gas that methane if you will uh could be sent back into the PowerHouse where we had massive gas gas fired uh boilers steam boilers and it took the first class engineer uh a long time to get

Comfortable with the idea of using biogas and his very expensive very large um steam boilers but once I got him convinced on it and we and he started using that stream he saw a 30% reduction in his natural gas costs just by something that we were producing in our

Own backyard right on the factory site so just that example alone really got me realizing that Wastewater is can be a very valuable commodity and secondly the biomass that we were producing from that uh anerobic digestor because it’s a a living growing entity you do have to waste some of it

Off well the area Farmers very quickly found out that this was a very like it was a good fertilizer and they were falling over themselves to get the fertilizer that we were pull or the biomass that we were pulling out of our digestor annually so long as their land

Fit the criteria they had to have like a a clay base within three feet of the surface things of that nature and once we did serve an essay just to see what the nutrient levels were then uh we could determine how many pounds per acre

We could spread on this land so it was all an interesting and learning experience for me at that point that time and it really taught me that uh Wastewater and you know many variations can be a very valuable resource okay I’ll just add one quick thing some of the ideas that the

Projects that I’ve talked lot briefly about um they’re actually coming not from the engineers but from The Operators themselves right that’s where most where a lot of learning is cominging because the Hands-On it’s the day-to-day it’s like we could use this for x or y we could use reused effluent

To to do the storm water flushing you know these sorts of things so there’s a huge body knowledge just rolling around in the heads of all the operators across the province and would like to tap into it um there is one resource out there The Province updated it was a 2008 one

We redid it it’s now a website instead of a book called closing thee loop.com do you know where the snowmakers get the water from affluent from the uh Waste Water treatment facility it’s actually a really interesting facility to go to because the biosolids are composted on site and

They’re used for landscaping and then a lot of the affluent is used for the snowmakers it’s tested it’s clean uh rather than use potable water rather than use water from the uh walls and streams that that’s kind of what happens there um as we wrap up any closing

Remarks from our panel and you have an example to show us spine I believe yeah I got a short story taking us back to Summer 2020 the height of coid sitting at home trying to work and trying to keep my kids busy with school and I see

A little news blip about Village Brewery in Calgary I’m thinking I can’t get there because of travel restrictions they had produced two versions of their summer beer called Village Blonde one the traditional way with the traditional water they use and the other was a partnership with University of Calgary

The pine uh Pine Valley wastewater treatment plant Pine Creek thank you um the abil Alberta Health Services and xylm they took treated effluent and produced a batch of beer and they sold them side by side on the shelves so it says right there on the CL can crafted with reused water sustainable water

Sustainable beer it was fantastic it was hard to get because it sold out so quickly and they couldn’t ship it to BC but somehow four pack ended up on my front porch of Victoria so that was the best beer I had during coid thank you how many closing remarks

Well that’s kind of that’s kind of what it’s going to take right to to sort of punch through that um I you know an idea that I uh haven’t seen implemented before but I I I don’t know really why we don’t have it which is summer hydration sort of stations in the city

That are using um a side by side you know taste test if you want to call it that for um for uh you know normal drinking water and reclaimed water I think that’s a bit of a I’d like I’d like to see someone do that I mean I’m

Sure it’s happening somewhere but that could be happening on a much larger scale so I think that’s pretty cool yeah well maybe that’s a an opportunity for terara because she works for the city of Vancouver Bruce any closing comments from you well with regards to uh the differences

From my home province of Manitoba and what I’ve seen out here in BC over the years um when it comes to biomass particularly from wastewater treatment plants um correct me if I’m wrong but it appears that it’s a challenge for these some of these municipalities to dispose of their biomass typically by applying

To agricultural land a lot of people are against that and I’m just wondering have things changed are people’s minds sort of coming around I mean in Manitoba not the sun rises and sets there but uh certainly we’re an agricultural area and we recognize the benefits of biomass so you know hopeful I know

There’s an ni Factor there and I think that’s part of the problem here so with conditions being what they are now you know we want to reuse our water and maybe this will help that cause as well in terms of biomass disposal it’s a bit of a regional issue like it’s definitely

An issue in the capital regional district um but just go up Island and it’s not so much in Nimo or if you’re here in the Lower Mainland I mean Jim can probably tell us it’s reused with mine mine Reclamation and Forestry and um some agriculture so it’s really sort

Of regionally specific but in some places definitely an underutilized resource I found that with a lot of areas um it is used for kils for so it’s basically for energy the biomass which is seems like an awful waste because it is such a a valuable resource and there

Is a lot of fuss with regards to oh that’s so gross we can’t use that meanwhile when you think about stuff any produce on our shelves it comes from all over the world most of those countries use biosolids and those biosolids are often nowhere nearly as well treated as

The ones we use so I’ve just a couple of minutes left any questions from the audience and the only thing I would recommend is if there are any questions please raise your hand well and if we can get you to use the microphone the reason for that is that way the online

Audience can hear your question as well any questions from the audience here oh over there okay thank you um thanks for sh for sharing your knowledge everyone very good discussion uh my question is uh sort of for Brian um what programs that you could speak about uh for grant funding for municipalities

To implement these types of Technologies are available currently or upcoming that’s a good question um the word currently is key because currently there isn’t one we’re heading into renegotiations with Canada this fall so it’ll be the we’ll be looking at either know sort of 2024 or 2025 and when those new

Programs come out they replace the existing one which is the investing in Canada infrastruct program you’ll see more pieces related to uh BC’s interest in supporting um um integrated resource recovery or circular economy and also tying that with sort of uh climate resilience um

They kind of go hand inand so we’re in a bit of a gap but it’s a normal part of the cycle of the bilateral funding programs okay any other questions from the audience or in the um on the online group as well any questions I’ll come

Back to you guys there’s one online can they comment on Environmental Protection in regards to water preservation more specifically on Wetlands protection against new developments and the idea of integrating the existing Wetlands Into Water and Wastewater loop I can repeat it had a little trouble understanding the question but

Um uh Stream flow augmentation and Wetland I mean we’re seeing um with in in BC with the drought conditions that we’re having these are areas uh that are really suffering um and um uh I I think it’s another area to look at um there there’s a little bit of a factor um

Making sure that the the the quality of the effluent that’s being released into those environments isn’t going to uh have a negative impact but I I think that’s something that should be looked at really carefully I think I think we have I think we have the need and it’s

Creating the opportunities that we didn’t necessarily see 10 and 15 years ago and we have time for just one quick question there was someone over there with a question yeah hi this is for Bruce probably from an operational perspective would you choose reclaimed effluent over rainwater capture which one is easier or

Is one easier than the other well well they’re both really good for formers but in terms of you know engagement overall engagement and just what’s involved I I prefer the operations at BCC the Blackwater Reclamation that’s just such an interesting thing I mean where we’ve taken that plant from

The day I first walked in there on November 1st 2010 to where it is today it’s a completely different operation um most of the original design other than the tanks themselves um it’s just not there um we’ve really really altered the process flow um maximized the efficiencies of both the

Bioreactors um Turned a Wastewater holding tank the raw Wastewater holding tank actually turned into it into a bioreactor just through air ration 11 cubic feet of air per minute using a very cheap golf course Pond air ring device so little things like that we’ve really tailor made that plant to suit

Our needs and uh quite frankly I’m looking for more raw product so okay thank you very much everyone for join joining us and uh thank you very much to our panelists Bruce caser um Tom Robinson and um Brian Bedford thank you very much and thanks again as always and