Capital budget for Port Dover wastewater treatment plant upgrades climbs to $37 million

The budget for upgrades to the Port Dover wastewater treatment plant is climbing.

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Norfolk County councilors, at a meeting on Tuesday, approved an increase of $7.6 million for the work, bringing the total budget for the project to $37 million.

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“I know nobody wants a budget amendment,” Mariana Balaban, the county’s engineering project director, told councillors. “This was a difficult decision to make. However, with larger complex projects we are looking at bringing this forward at the pre-tender stage and ensure continuity of the project.”

The plant is undergoing multi-phased upgrades to ensure the provision of wastewater treatment for residents and increasing the plant capacity to support development, said Balaban in a report to advisors. The plant was initially planned to provide 6,100 cubic meters per day average daily flow.

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“Given the lengthy detailed design period and the high development interest, the design was refined to size several treatment processes for the long-term Phase 2 upgrades with 7,500 cubic meters per day capacity.”

Coun. Chris VanPaassen noted the original budget for the project, approved in 2019, was $17.3 million.

“It’s four years later and we’re now at $37 million,” he said. “Is that because of increased costs or is it we’re doing more upgrades than originally planned or did we just find more things wrong as we went through the design process?”

Andrew Grice, general manager of Norfolk County’s environmental and infrastructure service, said the cost increase resulted from a combination of all those factors. He also said he believed the project was initially under-budgeted.

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“For a wastewater treatment plant, you often don’t know what it’s going to look like until it’s at the 50 to 75 per cent design stage,” said Grice. “That’s why you see some fairly significant budget amendments. Certainly, we have added a few things to the budget to clean up some deficiencies and added some elements supposed to be done in Phase 2 to make it easier from a constructability perspective.”

Grice said the county has applied for some provincial grant money for the project and is hopeful it will be approved.

The existing plant was built in the 1960s and has an average flow of 5,400 cubic meters per day.

“Although the plant is currently performing within acceptable performance parameters, there is an immediate need for replacement of obsolete technology that is not able to meet the nutrient removal requirements and upgrade the plant capacity to treat the projected growth flow for the short and long term, ” said Balaban in her report.

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VanPaassen questioned whether the previous council, given the cost information it has today, would have opted to build a new plant instead of investing in an old facility.

“We need to get a better handle on these estimates at the beginning, not as the job is progressing,” he said.

Grice said staff will “certainly be trying to do better with our initial estimates,” but assured advisors the upgrades will, essentially, create a new plant.

“You’re not building on a new site but 85 per cent of that plant is going to be brand spanking new.”

Final approval of the budget increase is required at an upcoming council meeting.

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