Clean drinking water is vital to the health and prosperity of our community, Mayor Tom Bain said to the 150 who gathered for speeches. He’s hoping the current streak of five months without a boil water order continues.
Later, Bain has recalled a decade of council meetings wrestle with cost increases and new engineering obstacles when planning for the new plant started with the selection of Toronto’s Associated Engineering as consultant in 1999.
At the same time, the town has struggled to keep the old plant going under increasingly strict provincial regulations.
Due to the lack of automation required, a skilled staff to meet provincial regulations, and environment ministry inspectors were sometimes lenient with deficiencies because they knew the new plant was on its way.
The cracks in ceilings and gaping holes in exterior walls were some of the visible signs of deterioration just before construction started on the new plant in May 2006.
The chief operator John Merritt has quipped during the tours that the former plant was so old ministry inspectors were even queasy about using the employee lunchroom.
The old plant gave a premature last gasp five months ago when its only clarifier tank developed a crack that forced a hasty switchover to the new plant, said Coun. Ray Lalonde.
Otherwise, the new town would have been forced to spend $150,000 on repairs.
Essex MP Jeff Watson and Essex MPP Bruce Crozier have spoke at the opening in recognition of the $15 million in senior government grants that went into the plant’s construction and new intake pipe in Lake St. Clair.
Watson has highlighted the new era of co-operation between the federal and provincial governments, with both mounting multi-billion-dollar infrastructure programs in the recession.
Michael Miedema, vice-president of HIRA General Contractors of St. Thomas, said that the four-storey Lakeshore plant was the biggest project his company had taken on.
