ACCIONA breaks ground on construction of new wastewater treatment plant for metro Vancouver

ACCIONA has begun construction of a new CA$700 million wastewater treatment plant that will service more than 200,000 residents and two First Nation communities in North Shore, part of the metropolitan area of Vancouver.

VANCOUVER, BC, SEPT 5, 2018 -- A ground-breaking ceremony to mark the completion of site preparation and ground reinforcement activities and to kick off the official construction phase was attended on Friday by federal and local authorities including Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard, Mable Elmore, MLA for Vancouver-Kensington, Greg Moore, Chair of the Metro Vancouver Board of Directors, Councilor Joshua Joseph of the Squamish Nation, Roger Bassam, Acting Mayor of the District of North Vancouver and Darrell Mussatto, Chair of Metro Vancouver's Utilities Committee.

The North Shore Waste Water Treatment Plant is a new facility that will replace the existing primary Lions Gate Wastewater treatment Plant, which is more than 50 years old. New federal regulations require that all Canadian wastewater treatment plants provide primary and secondary treatment to improve water quality and safety. The land under the existing wastewater plant will be decommissioned and the lands returned to the Squamish Nation.

The $700 million project, which ACCIONA is building for Metro Vancouver, a federation of municipalities that collaboratively plans for and delivers regional-scale services in British Columbia, has received $212.3 million in funding from the Government of Canada and $193 million from the Province of British Columbia. The project is using a Design Build Finance procurement approach.

The contract includes the design, build and construction financing for the new North Shore Secondary Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), which will have a state-of-the-art secondary treatment and energy recovery facilities. The new plant will be built to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards on a very compact site. Much of it will be buried underground. Its design incorporates energy efficiency and recovery solutions, water conservation and reuse, on-site storm water management and measures to minimize waste generation.

The project is being undertaken by ACCIONA Construction, the group's division specialized in the development of major complex infrastructure projects around the world and ACCIONA Agua, the group's water division, which designs, builds, operates and maintains water and wastewater facilities to meet the needs of more than 90 million people in more than 25 countries on 5 continents.

The new NSWTTP will be designed to meet community needs, with sustainability and community integration at the forefront.

Upon completion, key features will include:

• Capable of treating 102 million liters/day under normal conditions and up to 320 million liter/day when storm water enters the sewer system in wet weather.
• The plant will be built to LEED and Envision Gold Standards.
• The design of the plant will incorporate energy efficiency and recovery solutions water conservation and reuse, on-site storm water management and measures to minimize waste generation. The biogas generated from the treatment of the wastewater will be used to generate electricity to run the plant and heat the facility.
• The heat recovery facility is projected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7,200 tons per year.
• Rigorous heating, ventilation and odor control system that will capture air from the processes inside the building and clean it prior to releasing it into the atmosphere. Odor will be virtually undectable.
• Integration of interpretive elements, flexible community spaces and amenities
• Working towards returning all elements of liquid waste to the environment in a way that is protective of our waterways.

The plant has been designed to include integrated resource recovery using sustainable principles

The NSWWTP is scheduled to be operations by the end of 2020. To learn more, visit www.northshorewwtp.ca

ACCIONA's water division currently has more than 300 WWTP projects in construction or operation in more than 25 countries across five continents that represents 13.9 Million of cubic meters a day.