Lagoon

 

FRSC Wolseley Bay 2009

collecting baseline samples

French River Stewardship Council and the Noelville Sewage Lagoon Your Stewardship Council received many questions from our membership and the public about the operating of the lagoon, so we set out to better understand the program

The lagoon system for treatment of waste water is a proven and effective way of managing sewage and is controlled by operation standards from The Ministry of the Environment.  When operated to the standards and within is designed capacity, the lagoon is both safe and effective The Noelville lagoon is owned by the Municipality who hired the Ontario Clean Water Agency to operate the facility

The 2 years of testing our waters for excess levels of phosphorous indicated a significant increase in phosphate in the time period following the release of lagoon effluent

This led us to some discussions with the Lagoon management organization, following which we decided to apply our efforts to the problem

Our goal was to find a way to improve the quality of the lagoon discharge –

specifically, to reduce the phosphate levels by 50%

We identified a company, Canadian Shield Consultants from Sturgeon Falls, who claimed to have technology that would help us in  our quest.

 

The Stewardship Council then requested support and direction from the Municipality of French River, the Ontario Clean Water Agency,  and other volunteers

 

Mini lab brought to site

Canadain Shield built a miniature processing plant that would be used to demonstrate a cleaning process (see photos)

 

The first test was done in early June 2009 and it failed to meet our objectives/  Further analysis determined an equipment malfunction and the test was done a second time on June 24, 2009  and was very successful

Remember our aggressive objective of a 50% reduction in phosphate levels?

 

Well, the phosphate was reduced from .698 mg per litre to .138 mg per litre or 80%

 

With this data, we then met with the Municipality and the Ontarion Clean Water Agency to beging the process of identifying the next steps to achieving major improvements in the phosphate level of the lagoon discharge