Waterloo Region preparing for installation of its first ultrafiltration system

Waterloo Region has a new tool to help add capacity amid ongoing water shortage concerns. CTV’s Karis Mapp explains.

Work is underway to temporarily boost water capacity within the Mannheim Service Area, which includes Kitchener, Waterloo and parts of Cambridge, Woolwich and Wilmot.

Region of Waterloo councillors voted in February to install four temporary ultrafiltration containers at the Mannheim Water Treatment Plant.

The move is meant to be a short-term solution to address future capacity concerns, stemming from the region’s projected population growth of one million residents by 2051. The main issue is the “ability to pump, store, treat and distribute water” to support the community.

Officials said the containers from Laminar Water in Cambridge will provide more filtration and added capacity. However, the containers are not an additional water source.

“This container provides advanced membrane technology that filters very fine particles from the water,” Kenneth Brothers, the region’s interim commissioner of water services and wastewater operations, explained during a tour on Tuesday. “This enables us to bypass part of the treatment process at the Mannheim Water Treatment Plant.”

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The first container is expected to double the region’s water capacity from 25 to 50 litres per second.

“The next three units are of the same size and will have a capacity of 100 litres per second,” Brothers added.

The region said it chose Laminar because their containers could be adapted to fit the region’s specific needs.

“We got a phone call in December, right before the holidays, [asking if] we had an ultrafiltration system available that we could upgrade,” said Fraser Kent, Laminar Water’s president. “We customized the fluctuation system for different hydraulic retention times… to be able to help them to optimize the overall solution.”

The containers are typically used as mobile water treatment plants for disaster areas or to supplement existing facilities that need extra capacity or are undergoing repairs.

“We didn’t want to wait the four years to rebuild a plant,” Brothers explained. “This allows us to move fast, track forward from a four-year development to 18 months.”

The Region of Waterloo gets 20 to 25 per cent of its water from the Grand River, while 75 to 80 per cent comes from groundwater.

“Laminar technology will allow us to use all that capacity which, right now, is still flowing through the Grand River because we don’t have the ability at our water treatment plant to process,” said Regional Chair Karen Redman.

Workers are currently getting the Mannheim Water Treatment Plant ready for the first container’s installation. The work includes adding underground supports for the 400,000-pound system.

“It isn’t just pouring a [concrete] pad. You have to make sure the pad can support, not the weight on this one [container], but additional units when they come on,” Redman explained. “We [also] have to be thoughtful about removing this one, or putting in other ones, and the upgrades that we’re going to need to maintain over the next few years.”

The first container should be up and running in June. If all goes smoothly, the other three will be in place by next summer.

“This solution could provide nearly half the new capacity needed to support forecasted growth up to 2032,” the region said in a media release.

The cost of the work is estimated at $15,162,200. The region said they would use money from the Water Capital Reserve while they work to find other options for funding.

With reporting by Karis Mapp