Banded Peak School in Bragg Creek will be saying goodbye to its ineffective wastewater lagoon and hello to a new pump-out tank thanks to a decision made by Rocky View Schools (RVS) board of trustees May 15.
The current lagoon at the school was designed to work as an evaporative lagoon, but unfortunately does not function as one due to a design flaw that means the water just sits in the lagoon without evaporating. The liquid in the lagoon has to be pumped a few times each year and trucked to a sewage treatment plant in Cochrane for disposal. The lagoon also accumulates a significant amount of additional moisture from rain and snowfall, which greatly adds to the amount of fluid that needs to be trucked away, according to RVS administration.
The annual cost to transport and treat the wastewater is about $105,000 per year, depending on water usage in the school and precipitation levels.
As such Darrell Couture, RVS associate superintendent of business and operations, recommended the board approve $589,440 to decommission the lagoon.
“If we’re not using the lagoon as a way to treat sewage, we really should reclaim the lagoon and create a new system,” Couture said.
In its place a new pump-out tank will be installed at an estimated cost of $629,041, however, the RVS maintenance department suggests this cost would be substantially reduced by about $200,000 by utilizing the in-house personnel for some of the construction.
The board approved an expenditure of up to $1.1 million from the division’s cash-in-lieu fund for the project, which would allow for a cushion if the project requires more than the estimated $900,000 total project cost.
The new tank will include a future planning option that would allow electrical lines to be more easily run to the tank so the water can be directly sent to the water treatment plant in Bragg Creek.
For now, the water from the tank will still have to be trucked to Cochrane, but at a much-reduced cost to that of the lagoon. It is estimated trucking the water away from the tank would cost between $25,000 and $35,000 per year, which is about $75,000 less than the current cost with the lagoon.
“We think that there is a payback between nine and 12 years,” Couture said, “but there is also a (reduction in) the environmental impact.”
“I think in terms of looking at efficiency we know that the lagoon isn’t effective as we hoped it would be,” said trustee Helen Clease. “I think the big thing on this one here is future planning for the site and this will open up some doors.”
She added the school and community are involved in suggesting a plan of what should be done with the reclaimed lagoon site. Couture noted some suggestions they have heard so far include an amphitheatre and a naturalized area but nothing has been decided.
He said the lagoon would be decommissioned and the tank would be installed this summer, but work on backfilling the lagoon would likely not be completed until the summer of 2015 after the school design of the area has been decided.
However, $100,000 has been included in the $1.1-million expenditure to complete the backfilling.
The motion to accept the recommendation was made by Clease and was approved unanimously.
