It's time for outdated Holland Landing Sewage Lagoons to go: councillor

But town waiting for province to make decision

Yorkregion.com
May 3, 2019
Simon Martin

The stench you smell in Holland Landing this spring is the Holland Landing Sewage Lagoons and it's not going to stop any time soon it seems.

Town council has been wanting to decommission the lagoons for years, but nothing seems to be imminent as both the town and region wait for word from the province about the fate of the Upper York Sewage Solutions (UYSS).

Ward 1 Coun. Loralea Carruthers said something needs to be done about the lagoons now.

“We should bottle the smell and release it at Queen’s Park,” she said.

The stench this spring has been particularly bad, Carruthers said, causing a high number of resident complaints. Those complaints are nothing new. The annoyance for residents in the area is that they have been complaining about the issue since the 1990s, yet little has been done.

“Why are we subjecting our residents to this stink over paperwork?” Carruthers said

The long-held belief from residents and council was that the lagoons would be decommissioned as soon as the York Durham Sewage System extension was completed in 2016.

That’s not the case.

Mike Rabeau, York Region director of capital planning and delivery for environmental services, said the region needs to keep the lagoons operational until the Upper York Sewage Solution comes online, so it can transfer the certificate of approval from the lagoons to the new sewage plant.

Due to provisions of the Lake Simcoe Protection Act, there are no new sewage plants allowed on Lake Simcoe, so the region has to use the existing certificate from the lagoons for the new plant.

Rabeau said that directive came from the province. As it stands now, Rabeau said the absolute best case scenario for getting the system up and running would be by the end of 2026. But that would be contingent on getting environmental assessment approval for the project from the province shortly.

Rabeau said he has no idea when approval will come. The region originally filed its assessment for the project in 2014 and under normal timelines expected approval at some time in 2015. It’s now 2019 and the province still has the assessment in front of it.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of the Environment said the government is continuing to consider issues raised by stakeholders and Indigenous communities to ensure concerns are appropriately addressed before making a decision.

The Chippewas of Georgina Island have routinely voiced their disagreement with the plant that would put effluent into the East Holland River, which runs into Lake Simcoe.

The frustration for Carruthers is she believes the lagoon problem could be solved if there was more political will.

“The people giving the directive don’t have to smell it,” she said. “In 2019 you should not be thinking of raw sewage. They can flip a switch and send it south.”

Carruthers raised her concerns at East Gwillimbury council. Chief administrative officer Tom Webster said that East Gwillimbury is one of the largest municipalities that still has sewage lagoons. “It’s very outdated technology,” he said.

The sewage solution is a $535-million project that will accommodate 47 million litres per day additional capacity to service forecasted growth of 34,500 in Aurora, 27,000 in Newmarket and 91,500 in East Gwillimbury under provincial and regional plans.