There was excitement for Mayor Tom Rose last week when he was called into St. John’s to participate in an event that highlighted the province’s first 50,000 carbon credits soon going on the auction block.
The environmental firm Sharp Management Inc. quantified, verified and acquired certification for the credits through partnerships with the towns of Stephenville and Appleton-Glenwood to design and implement engineered wetlands to treat sewage waste water.
Rose was proud that the Town of Stephenville will be sharing in those carbon credits and quickly heaped praise on past council members for their involvement in making Stephenville’s Wastewater Treatment Facility Engineered Wetlands become a reality.
In fact, he singled out the former mayor Cecil Stein, who is an engineer, for coming up with the plan for the facility.
However, two veteran councilors who are still sitting on the current council were quick to point out that mayor Tom O’Brien – who succeeded mayor Stein after winning the 2005 election – was very involved and knowledgeable about the project.
The Wastewater Treatment Facility Engineered Wetlands was commissioned in 2009-10.
Coun. Don Gibbon even pointed out the fact that O’Brien had been invited as a keynote speaker to a national wastewater convention in Niagara Falls to speak on the Stephenville facility and was well received there.
It took a number of years for the treatment plant to be planned and put into place and like any other major project there were some hiccups along the way — such as when there was only about 80 per cent treatment in the winter of 2013.
However, that was fixed once spring arrived and, according to Coun. Mike Tobin, the facility is now operating at about 98 per cent, leaving very little untreated substance going into St. George’s Bay from Stephenville.
That’s a big difference when you consider that prior to this system being put into place raw sewer was going right into the lower end of Blanche Brook and taking the short run into St. George’s Bay.
With full sewage treatment expected to be in place for many communities by the end of 2020, as mandated by federal government guidelines, Stephenville is well ahead of the game after getting their Abydos system in place nearly a decade ago.
In fact, the last payment on the system, which cost about $10 million, is due to be made at the end of this month.
The price of putting such a system into place just gets higher and higher as the years go by but it’s something that municipalities have to come to terms with since billions of liters of untreated or undertreated sewage are being dumped into waterways every year.
It was great for the former leaders of Stephenville to have the foresight of having such a system installed and — despite a scattered day, when the conditions warrant, the smell not being the rosiest — the wastewater treatment system is working well.
The town has a brook with clean, clear water it can be proud of and a wastewater system operating to almost perfect capacity that’s the envy of others.