The Rural Municipality of La Broquerie is pursuing a $4-million wetland tertiary treatment project for their lagoon.

A presentation was made to council Wednesday night in regards to phase two of the plans to construct a system to enhance the quality of wastewater being discharged into the Seine River from the municipal lagoons. In January 2016 the Province of Manitoba put new wastewater treatment regulations into place which required municipalities to reduce the phosphorus and nitrogen levels in their wastewater before discharging.

During the presentation, Dick Menon, municipal project manager noted phase one started in 2016 with designing the upgrade of the existing lagoon, construction then began in March 2017 and has been completed.

Reeve Lewis WeissReeve Lewis Weiss says possession of the land from Luc Tetrault, just southeast of the La Verendrye Golf Course, will take place next week Friday and construction of phase two will start as soon as possible in spring.

"The clay is under the ground, it's all been tested. There was another site we were looking at a bit further away but the report showed that there wasn't sufficient clay there so we couldn't use that property. Apparently, you have to stick close to where the river is to get the good clay."

The cost of the land is $4,800 per acre and there are 115 acres, equalling a cost of $552,000. Weiss notes the cost of the land was lower than originally thought because part of the land is unusable due to the Manitoba-Minnesota Transmission Project line running through and requiring a buffer zone.

Menon outlined phase two consists of a new lift station at the La Broquerie lagoon to convey treated wastewater 1.5km southeast to the new wetland, a new force main, and a newly constructed wetland with native plants which uptake the nutrients for its growth thereby reducing the level of nutrients being discharged into the Seine River.

Weiss says the positives of the project include the removal of the necessary nutrients, and to the required levels, before discharging. He adds there is one negative which comes with large projects.

"The negatives are always the cost. Everything you do there's a large cost to it. I expect if what we do today if we had to do it in ten or 30 years from now it would only be that many times more. I feel a little bit better about doing something, a $4-million project today than waiting 20 years because I can only imagine how much it would cost."

Weiss notes the municipality received a $2-million matching grant from the federal government for the tertiary project.

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