Wastewater Infrastructure and Ratepayer Protection

The Problem in Plain Language

Owen Sound's wastewater treatment plant can handle ordinary average flow. The larger ratepayer and environmental risk appears during storms and snowmelt, when rainwater and groundwater enter the sanitary collection system and remaining combined sewers carry much larger peak flows.

That pressure creates bypass and overflow risk, consumes capacity that could otherwise support housing, and can accelerate expensive repairs and expansion. A practical plan therefore starts by finding and removing avoidable wet-weather flow, protecting the system from prohibited discharges, and publishing the costs and results.

Capacity work and new housing should proceed together. The City can make better use of existing infrastructure when it reduces unnecessary inflow and infiltration and requires new development to manage its own stormwater and sanitary impacts.

Current Capacity and Wet-Weather Pressure

The City's 2025 Wastewater Treatment Plant Performance Report records an average daily flow of 12,082 m³/day against a rated average capacity of 24,545 m³/day, or 49.2% average utilization. The highest daily flow was 59,026 m³, compared with a rated peak daily capacity of 65,000 m³.

Instantaneous wet-weather pressure was more severe. On April 19, 2025, the report records an instantaneous flow equivalent of 81,406 m³ after 44 mm of rain fell in two hours. The 2025 Annual Collection System Performance Report records eight wet-weather collection overflow dates totalling approximately 83,795 m³. The treatment-plant report records two bypasses totalling approximately 986 m³, caused by heavy rain combined with snowmelt and heavy downpours.

These figures show why average utilization alone is an incomplete capacity measure. The priority is to reduce stormwater and groundwater entering sanitary sewers through sewer separation, sump and roof-leader disconnection, infiltration-and-inflow investigations, targeted pipe and private-connection repairs, and continuous wet-weather monitoring.

Each intervention should have a public work plan showing the area examined, the flow problem identified, the repair or separation completed, the cost, and the measured result.

Preparing for New Housing

New housing should be evaluated against both ordinary demand and wet-weather performance. Before approving a large connection or expansion, the City should publish the assumptions used for population, daily wastewater generation, stormwater separation, peak wet-weather flow, pumping, treatment, and downstream collection capacity.

A campaign planning estimate for proposed housing units would state its assumptions for unit size, occupancy, average daily flow, peak factor, and site-specific stormwater controls. It would remain a planning estimate rather than a capacity certification or engineering design.

New development should avoid increasing wet-weather pressure. The City should prioritize sewer separation, require effective on-site stormwater management, protect sanitary infrastructure from roof and foundation drainage, and direct capacity investments toward measured bottlenecks. Reducing avoidable wet-weather flow can create practical capacity and delay or reduce the need for expensive expansion.

Preventing and Tracing Chemical Contamination

Owen Sound's Sewage Use and Land Drainage By-law already provides a strong foundation. It prohibits discharges that can harm sewage works and specifically addresses solvents, fuels, hazardous chemicals, corrosive or damaging discharges, industrial pollutants, and numerical contaminant limits. It also provides for waste-audit surveys, municipal inspections and sampling, property-line or other approved access for applicable sampling and flow measurement, self-monitoring where approved, spill reporting, enforcement and fines, and liability for investigation, cleanup, and damage to municipal sewage works.

Andrii would ask staff to turn those powers into a risk-based industrial-discharge control programme:

• continuous pH, conductivity, temperature, and suitable hydrocarbon or VOC warning sensors at the plant and priority sewer branches;
• automatic retention of samples when an abnormal condition triggers an investigation;
• laboratory analysis with documented chain of custody;
• progressive upstream sampling to identify the affected branch and property;
• risk-based inspections, including occasional unannounced inspections of high-risk businesses;
• current chemical inventories, drain maps, secondary containment, spill plans, and licensed hazardous-waste disposal records;
• monitoring and permit fees focused on higher-risk dischargers;
• recovery of investigation, cleanup, and repair costs from proven responsible parties through the available legal and by-law processes.

Warning sensors identify abnormal conditions and trigger sampling. Laboratory analysis identifies chemicals. A pH, conductivity, hydrocarbon, or VOC signal cannot by itself identify every solvent or establish responsibility.

When a source is identified, enforcement should focus on stopping the discharge, protecting workers and the environment, correcting the process, and recovering public costs where the evidence and law support recovery. The objective is prevention and accountability, with fair process for the affected business or property owner.

Odour Control and Energy Recovery

Owen Sound's $48 million wastewater upgrade included a thermophilic digester, biosolids facilities, and new biogas-utilization and heating systems, as described in the project summary from J.L. Richards. The City's wastewater brochure describes the digester methane biogas as being burned in the boiler building, including for onsite winter heating, and the 2024 performance report records ongoing boiler, digester-gas, gas-booster, and gas-valve maintenance. Public reporting should now show how the system is operating today, including the gas produced, used, flared, vented, or lost.

Digester methane is odourless. Wastewater odours generally come from hydrogen sulphide, mercaptans, ammonia, and other organic compounds associated with incoming sewage, screening and grit removal, pumping, primary treatment, sludge thickening, biosolids storage and loading, or inadequately contained process air. Capturing digester gas can recover energy, but it cannot by itself eliminate neighbourhood odours. The City should identify the source before selecting controls.

Andrii would direct staff to complete the following work:

1. Conduct a source-by-source odour study. Monitor hydrogen sulphide and other suitable indicators at treatment stages and the plant perimeter. Combine readings with wind direction, weather, operating events, and resident complaint locations to identify the processes responsible for recurring off-site odour.
2. Audit the existing biogas system. Publish annual biogas production and methane concentration; report gas used for heating, flared, vented, or lost through leakage; disclose maintenance costs, equipment condition, and purchased energy displaced; and identify why any usable gas remains unutilized.
3. Control odours at their sources. Evaluate covers and negative-pressure ventilation for identified sources. Compare biofilters, activated carbon, and chemical scrubbers where appropriate, prioritizing headworks, sludge handling, biosolids storage, and loading according to measured results.
4. Determine the best use for surplus biogas. Compare plant and digester heating, combined heat and electricity generation, upgrading to renewable natural gas, compressed renewable natural gas for compatible buses or other municipal vehicles, pipeline injection, and other local energy uses.

Raw digester biogas commonly contains approximately 60% to 75% methane together with moisture, hydrogen sulphide, and other contaminants. Vehicle fuel requires gas cleaning, upgrading, compression, storage, a fuelling station, and compatible vehicles. Vehicle fuel is therefore a feasibility option. The City should first maximize existing onsite heating or combined heat and power where those options provide better financial value, and consider renewable natural gas for buses only where measured surplus production and lifecycle costing support it.

Wastewater Debt and Repair Costs

Wastewater ratepayers need a service-level account of infrastructure debt, operating costs, repairs, and future obligations. The City's public external-debt discussion and the underlying Appendix E debt schedule provide a starting point.

Appendix E reports a total external debt balance of $28,615,664.20 after its listed internal-source reduction, with a gross listed balance of $29,428,281.15. That combined figure includes police, landfill, water, wastewater, bridges, and other purposes. It is not a wastewater-only total.

These are the wastewater-related entries visible in the schedule, not a substitute for a complete service-level debt register. The City should publish each debt's purpose, approval, original and remaining principal, interest rate, repayment schedule, funding source, principal-versus-interest payments, and early-payment options. Where the current records do not provide a clear rate, principal-interest breakdown, or funding source for an individual debt, the disclosure should say so and identify the record needed to complete it.

Repair and expansion decisions should connect debt to measured system results. Each major project should show the capacity or reliability problem it addresses, alternatives considered, expected service result, lifecycle cost, and effect on wastewater rates.

Incident Transparency and Public Reporting

The City should publish prompt, usable information when a serious wastewater event occurs. This includes a serious contamination event, bypass, major equipment failure, or unexpected infrastructure failure.

• give Council and the public a preliminary notice promptly;
• separate observed facts, laboratory findings, engineering conclusions, and working hypotheses;
• identify affected infrastructure and immediate protective action;
• publish preliminary and final repair costs;
• report insurance claims, enforcement action, and amounts recovered;
• provide quarterly reporting on abnormal sensor events, samples, exceedances, inspections, spills, and enforcement outcomes;
• provide annual reporting on treatment flows, wet-weather overflows, bypasses, infrastructure condition, debt, planned capital work, and performance results.

A narrowly defined temporary delay can protect source tracing or enforcement when immediate disclosure of operational details would compromise that work. The relevant findings should be published once the concern ends, with the reason and duration of the delay recorded.

Certified Independent Wastewater Options

Properties with suitable land and site conditions may be candidates for approved composting toilets, greywater systems, septic systems, or other certified independent options. Ontario regulates these systems through the applicable Building Code, sewage-system rules, environmental permissions, permits, soil and groundwater safeguards, maintenance requirements, and neighbour-protection measures. The Ontario sewage self-assessment and current Ontario Building Code information provide a starting point for determining the approval path.

These options are supplementary. Wet-weather infiltration and inflow remain the larger system-wide capacity pressure. The City should investigate how its principle that only service users pay applies when a property lawfully operates an approved independent system, including connection requirements, user charges, inspection, maintenance, and public-health safeguards. Land area alone would not create an automatic right to disconnect from municipal service.

Any private or communal wastewater option should have a named responsible operator, a maintenance plan, appropriate financial assurance where required, and a clear response plan for failure. The goal is reliable service and protection of neighbours, groundwater, surface water, and ratepayers.

Priority Actions

1. Publish a service-level wastewater debt, repair, rate, and performance register.
2. Map wet-weather flows and prioritize sewer separation, sump disconnections, private-connection repairs, and measured infiltration-and-inflow reductions.
3. Set transparent wet-weather and sanitary-capacity requirements for new housing and major connections.
4. Implement risk-based industrial-discharge monitoring, automatic sample retention, laboratory confirmation, upstream tracing, and fair enforcement.
5. Publish prompt incident notices followed by laboratory findings, engineering conclusions, costs, corrective action, and recovered amounts.
6. Complete a source-to-control odour study, audit the existing biogas system, and publish the energy-recovery results.
7. Review regulated independent wastewater options for suitable properties and clarify how lawful non-users are charged.

Protect the system, measure the pressure, identify the source, recover avoidable costs, and show ratepayers what happened.

Sources

• City of Owen Sound Water and Wastewater Department
• Owen Sound 2025 Wastewater Treatment Plant Performance Report
• Owen Sound 2025 Annual Collection System Performance Report
• Owen Sound 2024 Wastewater Treatment Plant Performance Report
• J.L. Richards: Owen Sound WWTP Upgrades and Expansion
• City of Owen Sound Waste Water Treatment brochure
• Owen Sound Sewage Use and Land Drainage By-law 2006-034
• HelpOS: Update on Owen Sound's $28.6 million external debt
• City Appendix E debt schedule
• Ontario Building Code
• Ontario sewage self-assessment
• Ontario Procedure F-10-1 sampling and analysis requirements
• U.S. EPA Design Manual: Odour and Corrosion Control
• NSERC: Anaerobic digestion and biogas composition

The policy distinguishes current public records from campaign proposals. Sensor alerts, laboratory results, engineering conclusions, and responsibility findings would be reported at the level of certainty supported by the evidence.

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