The Town of Unity is receiving positive attention and feedback on their innovative wastewater treatment project, one that could act as a blueprint for other growing communities in the area.

The Saskatchewan Municipal Awards gave the honourable mention to the town as a part of there 12th annual program. The program focuses on projects throughout the province that demonstrate community based initiatives that improve municipal services and enhance the economic well-being of the residents.

Collin Field, public works director for the Town of Unity, played an integral part through developing the new wastewater system and said it took some out-of-the-box thinking to achieve what is now, a sustainable and cost effective system.

“We were basically at a point where our current lagoon wasn’t able to support the wastewater from the population that we had, let alone any new comers to the area. The province stated that the town wouldn’t be able to have anymore growth until we addressed this issue,” said Field.

He said that they looked at all the usual suspects when they initially set out looking for a solution including, expanding their current lagoon, augmenting through mechanical means and relocating the lagoon, all of which had significantly high costs, some upwards of $10 million. Luckily, they came across a system that was being used in Australia, the MemFree Wastewater Treatment System by Soneera Water. 

Tecvalco Ltd. in North Battleford is the exclusive manufacturer and distributor in Canada and provided the innovative system that was not only more cost-effective, the nature of the system requires almost no maintenance costs and also has room for further expansion on top of the initial growth capacity it provided.

No chemicals are used in the process and requires only low-voltage electricity and according to Soneera, can operate 24/7 without stopping or human interaction for approximately 100 days.

“The low-voltage electricity is passed through the water and renders everything inert, after which micro-bubbles form and all the small particles float to the top with the bubbles and the heavier particles form a conglomerate and sink to the bottom where they are filtered out,” said Field.

By implementing this process, the new wastewater capacity has allowed the town to sustain upwards of 1000 new residents and if more is needed, Field said they are still able to add on to the current system as is to likely accommodate an additional 500-1000 residents.

Not only has the innovation been recognized by the awards committee, Fields said they have also received several inquiries from other communities to learn more about the system and potentially introduce it into their own communities.

The awards committee received a total of 18 nominations submitted on behalf of 35 municipalities and handed out just five awards with one of the committee members proclaiming, “they hit it out of the park!”.