During a recent visit, the City of Selkirk welcomed the Provincial Minister of Environment and Climate Change and a group of MLAs to the wastewater treatment plant, where the environmental achievements were eagerly showcased and highlighted.
The group – Minister Tracy Schmidt, and MLAs Mike Moyes (Riel), Robert Loiselle (St. Boniface), Tyler Blashko (Lagimodière), and JD Devgan (McPhillips) – were in town to tour several of the city’s facilities and learn about Selkirk’s commitment to the environment, sustainability and a circular economy.
“We had a fantastic tour of the state-of-the-art Selkirk wastewater treatment facility with Mayor Larry, council, and City of Selkirk staff,” said Minister Schmidt.
“Selkirk’s Utilities Manager, Raven Sharma, walked us through the exceptional facility and explained all the ways in which they are bringing in the next generation of scientists and workers through hands-on education and collaboration with post-secondary institutions. Selkirk has a remarkable wastewater treatment facility, which treats effluent to a higher standard than provincial regulations; this facility raises the bar when it comes to water treatment and protecting our waterways. I want to thank Mayor Larry and team for organizing and touring members of our Climate Caucus around Selkirk in the impressive fleet of electric vehicles!”
Following the tour of the wastewater treatment plant, the group headed to the Rec Complex and water treatment plant.
Johannson was more than a little thrilled to host the visitors and show off the city’s climate action and environmental stewardship successes.
“Any chance we get to show the wastewater treatment plant, the water treatment plant and the impressive solar panels at the Rec Complex to others, we’re taking it. We were happy to welcome Minister Schmidt and the MLAs to town and the first stop on the tour was the wastewater treatment plant. The plant was a long time coming and our team worked with builders to make sure it was the best, for our needs and the needs of the region and for the environment,” Johannson said.
“When we show people what the treated effluent looks like after it goes through the process, people are blown away. They really are, it’s a crystal-clear glass of water and it is jaw-dropping.”
Selkirk is known throughout the province and across the country as an environmental leader. The city has hosted Federal politicians interested in everything from Selkirk’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, which has been integrated into day-to-day operations since inception, to its dedicated Sustainable Economic Development Department, which has been successful in attracting green industry and hundreds of future jobs to the city.
The treatment plant is a state-of-the-art facility. Using membrane filtration, it turns wastewater from a pollutant responsible for deteriorating the water quality and plant life of the Red River and Lake Winnipeg into water that is not only potentially suitable for consumption but can be reused for several practical purposes. The plant also has a dewatering bed that turns sludge created during the treatment of wastewater into a product that can be used for fertilizer, which further contributes to a circular economy.
The building does not use fossil fuels for operations, and it has been designed so that it can be cost-effectively expanded to accommodate growth in the city and provide service to the region.
Environmental Stewardship a pillar of our Strategic Plan
Chief Administrative Officer Duane Nicol says there was plenty of good news to inform the Minister and MLAs about, including the city’s desire to produce green hydrogen on-sight with reclaimed water.
“Environmental Stewardship is one of the five strategic pillars in our strategic plan, and we’ve worked very hard over the last decade to implement that vision. While we have more work to do, we’ve reduced our environmental footprint, becoming more financially efficient and generating new economic opportunities for our city and region,” said Nicol.
According to Nicol, the Province of Manitoba has played and will continue to play an important role in supporting the city’s work to achieve its net-zero targets and goals around building a more circular local economy.
“Having Minister Schmidt and her colleagues come to see our work is extremely helpful. We want to see Selkirk and Manitoba thrive in the low-carbon economy of the future. So, not only did we demonstrate what we’ve done, but we talked about where we want to go and talked about how the city and the province can work together to get there.”
Next up was the Selkirk Rec Complex. The entourage hopped into three of the city’s electric vehicles for the drive over and checked out one of the province’s largest rooftop solar panel installations. Selkirk makes it a practice to replace gas vehicles with either electric or hybrid and its utility fleet is now 50 per cent electric.
The solar panels were installed in 2019, making the complex, which has had geothermal heating since it was built in 1985, even more environmentally responsible. The panels were installed with the assistance of a Manitoba Hydro grant and they save the city about 16 per cent in energy costs.
The final stop on the tour was the water treatment plant, which last year was fully converted to geothermal heating and cooling. Half the building was converted in 2019 using an innovative system that uses the city’s existing wells instead of requiring new ones to be drilled. The geothermal system has the capacity to be a district system and could heat and cool new buildings in the future, including a future multi-purpose recreation facility or even nearby apartment blocks that may need new systems.
The water treatment plant was expanded to double its size in 2011 when the city drilled new wells in St. Andrews and an 11 km-long pipeline to bring the newly sourced water to the plant, ensuring an abundant and sustainable supply.
The facility used to be the city’s second largest producer of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions – behind the old wastewater treatment plant – and the two combined to account for 30 per cent of Selkirk’s total corporate emissions. Now, neither the water treatment plant, nor the new wastewater treatment plant, use fossil fuels for regular operations and therefore do not produce GHG emissions.
