RED ROCK, Ont. – For years Red Rock has been faced with a multi-million dollar cost to replace their pollution control plant that would be virtually impossible to pay.
With a population of just below 1,000, the Northwestern Ontario community had limited means to raise the more than $8 million of their share that would typically be required for the $25.7-million facility.
Within the next two years the community will have a new state-of-the-art secondary treatment plant to ensure clean wastewater is released into the Nipigon Bay of Lake Superior. Thunder Bay-Superior North MPP Michael Gravelle, along with federal counterpart Patty Hajdu, travelled to Red Rock on Friday morning where before a gathering of close to 100 residents they announced the province would be putting in $17.1 million and Ottawa chipping in nearly $8.6 million to cover the remaining balance.
Red Rock mayor Gary Nelson said the township has been trying to patch up the existing facility, which only provided primary treatment despite provincial legislation requiring secondary sewage treatment, for close to the past decade but there’s nothing more that can be done.
“The plant down here is 50 years old. It’s finished,” Nelson said.
“There’s no way the township of Red Rock could replace that. The money’s just not there. We have no industry in our town. Without the federal and provincial governments stepping up to help us, we would be in trouble in a couple of years.”
Red Rock had previously priced out a new facility and had secured a combined $9 million from senior levels of government, including $4.5 million from the former federal Conservatives. But over time the costs skyrocketed, sending the community back to the drawing board.
There was around 1,200 people living in Red Rock when the mill had been operated but in the years since its closure in 2006 the population is now at 980, which Nelson said has shown signs of rebounding.
Gravelle said it would have been “simply impossible” for the small community to meet the financial burden.
“Since they’ve lost the asset of the mill and the challenge of just having a residential base, to come up with $8 million would be really something they couldn’t do without raising taxes to a phenomenal point,” Gravelle said.
Nipigon Bay had been designated as an area of concern through a joint process by the Canadian and American governments to identify and reverse environmental damage along the Great Lakes. The construction of the new plant has long been part of the plan to remove the area of concern label, with the federal government recently declaring all actions had been completed to address that portion of the north shore of Lake Superior.
Hajdu said the proper treatment of sewage and wastewater is an essential service for every community.
“To have wastewater discharged to the lake in a semi-treated way or in an untreated way certainly isn’t going to contribute to the beauty and the health and prosperity of our region,” Hajdu said.
Gravelle has spent a number of years working to attract industry back to the community and new infrastructure can only help those efforts, he said.
“It’s one of those core values of a community. You want to have safe wastewater. You want it to be properly discharged,” Gravelle said. “That’s huge and it sets the community up to continue to work on economic development.”
Nelson said it will likely take at least 18 months to have the new facility operational.
“When they’re finished we’re going to have a state-of-the-art secondary sewer treatment plant,” Nelson said. “We’re hoping to get the shovel in the ground as soon as they can, this summer.