St. John's sewage treatment plant starts up

A new sewage-treatment plant in St. John's that took years to construct and ran tens of millions of dollars over budget was only operating for about an hour when the first unusual objectcame through the system: a set of dentures.

Deanne Kincaid, a city waste water engineer, said that the day before the state-of-the-art facilitywas brought on line, staff talked about what they would find coming through the system.

Someone joked about findingfalse teeth.

"They said, 'No way, you won't see teeth.' Well ... about an hour into running raw sewage, the first thing that came up was teeth."

The newplant is screening outsolid materialand treating waste water to kill bacteria and viruses before it goes into St. John's harbour.

Mayor Dennis O'Keefe confirmed at Monday night'sregular council meeting that the plant was officially started up last Friday, after two weeks of trial runs.

"Officially, we are now cleaning up the harbour for the first time in 500 years," O'Keefe said.

Theplant is located on the south side of the city. Itwill handle waste from the cities of St. John's and Mount Pearl and the nearby community of Paradise.

Construction costs for the project skyrocketed over the years, rising more than 50 per cent over its initial budget of $93 million in 1999.

By November 2008, the cost had reached $144 million.

Kincaid said people shouldn't consume or swim in thewaterafter it is treated, but it would be considered safe because most bacteria would have been removed.

"What we're doing throughout the plant process," she said, "is taking out about 40 per cent of the organics, 50 to 60 per cent of the solids and then about 99 per cent of the bacteria."

The plant isn't running at full capacity yet. Only sewage from areas west of Waldegrave Street in St. John's including the city of Mount Pearl and the town of Paradise is being treated.

Engineers expect to have sewage from all of St. John's running through the plant by the spring.