August 29, 2008

NIAGARA NATIONAL HISTORIC SITES

A historic recreation is carried out at Fort George in Niagara-on-the-Lake. A local sewage lagoon nearby is set to reach capacity in a few years. Project Niagara wants to turn the lakefront site into the home of a music festival, which could influence plans for expanding the lagoon. For more Water and Wastewater stories, see our 12-page pullout section inside.

Water and Wastewater

History plays a role in Niagara-on-the-Lake development

Sewage lagoons sit on War of 1812 heritage site

PETER KENTER

correspondent

The town of Niagara-on-the-Lake is served by two ordinary sewage lagoons near the shore of Lake Ontario — that just happen to sit on an extraordinary piece of property.

The 268-acre parcel of land was used by American troops in a landing during the War of 1812 in which nearby Fort George was captured and occupied for a period of seven months, making it a site of national historical significance.

Project Niagara, a consortium of the National Arts Centre Orchestra and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, wants to turn the lakefront property into the home of a summer music festival, with an amphitheatre it wants to see constructed on the site of the lagoons in time to celebrate the War of 1812 bicentennial.

A recent study shows that the sewage lagoons will probably reach their capacity by 2013.

A study by consultant Hatch Mott MacDonald has identified five possible alternatives for the facility:

• Upgrade the existing treatment plant and use the lagoons to hold extra sewage from wet weather flows. Estimated cost: $17 million.

• Pipe sewage to nearby Port Weller’s treatment plant, with wet- weather flows held in new storage tanks. Estimated cost: $26.6 million.

• Pipe sewage to the Port Weller treatment plant and build a new higher-flow treatment plant to deal with wet weather flows. Estimated cost: $23.3 million.

• Pipe sewage to the Port Weller plant and pipe wet-weather flows to a special facility in Port Weller East. Estimated cost: $27.7 million.

• Build a new sewage treatment plant nearby and decommission the existing plant and lagoons. Estimated cost: $27 million.

Further complicating the picture, the land actually belongs to the federal government and can be used only as a sewage lagoon by Niagara Region. If the lagoons are decommissioned, all land reverts to the Crown.

“Obviously, the least costly solution is to upgrade the lagoons at the existing location,” says Peter Baker, Associate Director, Water & Wastewater Engineering with Niagara Region.

“However, just because it’s the lowest cost solution doesn’t mean it kills the option of having a music festival locate there if we can find funding from other sources for the sewage system.

“But the population of Niagara-on-the-Lake is growing and we’re estimating that we should increase the capacity of the lagoons by 2013, so we’re moving forward with our studies.”

The Master Plan Class Environmental Assessment for wastewater servicing in the Northeast Area of the Niagara Region has recently been completed, but the region will be working collaboratively with Project Niagara on background studies and a provincial environmental assessment of the specific site, which will include an extensive historical assessment. But, because part of the site is owned by Parks Canada, a more rigorous federal environmental assessment may be called for.

“The site has quite a history,” says Bob Andrews, Superintendent of Parks Canada’s Niagara National Historic Sites. “It was part of the American landing zone between One Mile Creek and Two Mile Creek in the battle of Fort George on May 27th, 1813. Where the lagoons empty into Lake Ontario is right at Two-Mile Creek.

The other side of the lagoon is Carolinian forest that was bought by the Canadian military in 1908 as Camp Niagara and actively used for training until the late 1960s. The military ceased using it in 2000, but since they once used it for small arms, rifles, pistols, machine guns and as a grenade range, they have to clean it up and check for unexploded ordnance before they hand it back to us.”

Andrews says he hopes to see the site rehabilitated as a Parks Canada site that includes a home for the music festival.

“Fifty years ago the lagoon site property was used as a town dump. Everybody finds it interesting now. We’d love to have it rehabilitated by the bicentennial of the beginning of the War of 1812.”

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