The Municipality of Port Hope (Ont.) Water Treatment Plant delivers potable drinking water to more than 16,000 residents and numerous businesses every day.
In 2001, an engineers report concluded that Port Hope’s original water treatment plant could no longer meet Ontario’s new water regulations. The new regulations were in response to the tainted water tragedy that struck Walkerton, Ont., in May 2000 when seven people died, and more than 2,000 people fell ill due to E.coli present in Walkerton’s water system.
As a result, immediate measures were taken to bring the original Port Hope Water Treatment Plant into compliance with the new regulations, while a long-term solution in the form of a new water treatment plant was examined and developed.
Port Hope’s old water treatment plant had been built in 1938 with modifications coming in 1958 and the 1970s, when it was regarded as a state-of-the-art treatment plant. However, the regulations under the Safe Drinking Water Act evolving out of the Walkerton tragedy forced the municipality to consider upgrading the treatment plant again. Reviewing their options, Port Hope elected to finance a new water treatment plant that would meet long-term needs of the community as opposed to invest more than $9 million in upgrades to the old facility.
Overseeing construction of the new water treatment plant while maintaining and operating the old one was Rick Trumper, water treatment supervisor for the municipality of Port Hope.
“Some of the biggest challenges were the staffing of two plants during the commissioning/training phase,” Trumper told WWD.
Trumper had to manage the construction schedule as well as the added workload of assisting the consultant and contractor. Despite the challenges faced by Trumper, the new Port Hope Water Treatment Plant finally came online. Four years after the initial groundbreaking, WWD attended the ceremony marking the official opening for the new plant in December 2005.
Plant design
As part of the construction process, the municipality of Port Hope looked to KMK Consultants to complete an options report to review and select appropriate technologies; conduct Class Environmental Assessments; and pilot test the preferred technologies, as well as design and manage the construction of the new water treatment plant, which included the implementation of membrane-related treatment technology.
The state-of-the-art membrane technology selected for the new water treatment plant allows for a higher level of water treatment in a smaller footprint when compared to conventional water treatment plants of similar size.
“This is only one of three Zenon 1000 plants in Ontario right now, and the membrane technology is the most up to date worldwide and as far as we are concerned, the best,” Trumper said.
Rated as ultrafiltration membranes, each membrane unit at the Port Hope Water Treatment Plant contains millions of tiny tubes that have a diameter approximately the size of 0.2 microns. These tubes, in turn, filter the water as it is pulled through the treatment system and provide effective filtration of bacteria, viruses and pathogens. This process does not require the addition of chemicals to aid in the filtering process, which results in significant cost savings for Port Hope.
“We chose the Zenon 1000 membranes for the low solids our raw water contains, plus the fact that the membrane system is a plug-and-play system,” Trumper said. “UF membranes also give us the added protection against pathogens—our raw water is sometimes influenced by the Ganaraska River runoff.”
Steps in water treatment
Source water for the Port Hope Water Treatment Plant comes directly from Lake Ontario. Upon entering the treatment plant, the water is screened for large debris in order to protect the pumps.
From there, the water flows to the low lift pumps, which start to push the water to the membrane tanks. After moving through the low lift pumps, the water is treated in micro-strainers to remove small debris (>0.5 mm) in order to provide additional protection to the membranes.
Following the micro-strainers, the water filters through the membranes to remove organisms. Chlorine is then added to the water for primary disinfection, and the water enters a chlorine contact chamber to provide disinfection contact time.
Finally, the water is moved through high lift pumps to convey the treated water to the distribution system.
Equipment solutions
According to Trumper, the operational components of the facility are also made up of state-of-the-art advanced technology. The SCADA system, fiber optic communications for some equipment, valves, pumps and all other components are the latest and best suited for operation in concert with the Zenon membrane technology.
“We also looked at cost effectiveness compared to other membrane companies. We found Zenon had much better life-associated costs,” Trumper said.
When it came to selecting the various technologies to be incorporated into the Port Hope Water Treatment Plant, Trumper told WWD that it was necessary to visit the water treatment plants of several similarly-sized communities to that of Port Hope.
“We visited several communities to see what other people have done; we found that each site had unique challenges to master,” Trumper said. “We took our own challenges and found that membrane technology would best suit our needs. City council also wanted to supply the community of Port Hope with the best quality of water available.”
Trumper added that a committee was formed to examine the various products and technologies that make up a water treatment plant. The committee’s main goal was to look at the products and technologies incorporated at the old water treatment plant while comparing and contrasting these products and technologies with what has become the standard in the industry.
The plant was also designed to grow along with the size of the community as ample space has been reserved for additional pump systems and membrane capacity. For example, Trumper mentioned that the plant is currently employing enough membranes to handle treatment at the current peak average flow, which is 2.64 mgd.
In the future, the plant will be able to expand the treatment system to handle nearly three times the current peak average flow.
“As our flows increase due to growing demands from development, we can simply add more membranes to match the demand and truly account for the costs related to these increases back on developers’ shoulders through development charges,” Trumper said.
Trumper told WWD that once the plant reaches its maximum treatment capacity in the future, plant officials could increase capacity even further by removing a wall and expanding the membrane tanks.
Citizen feedback
From the outset, the citizens of Port Hope have been supportive of the municipality of Port Hope’s need to construct the new water treatment plant, something that has not gone unnoticed by Trumper.
“The new plant has been very well accepted—there have been little to no complaints about the fact that we needed to build a new plant,” Trumper said. “Most of the citizens who have come forward to comment fully see the need to invest in this type of essential service.”
Since the completion of the Port Hope Water Treatment Plant, many other communities of similar populations and consulting firms have taken tours of the facility.
According to Trumper, the visitors are mainly interested in the technologies incorporated into the Port Hope facility so they also may be able to protect their citizens by providing high quality drinking water.
Project cost and funding
The capital cost for the Port Hope Water Treatment Plant was $17 million (CAN). Approximately $11 million was jointly funded by the Province of Ontario and the Federal Government of Canada through the Ontario Small Town and Rural Development grant program. The municipality of Port Hope funded the remaining $6 million.
The municipality examined various ways to raise the $6 million in funding it was responsible for through a water rate study conducted in 2004. The study examined what water rates should be charged to system users to recover the costs of the water supply system. The municipality of Port Hope council approved and implemented the study’s recommendations.
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