A new water treatment plant in the Coquitlam watershed is now half complete.
Yesterday, the media got a sneak peek of the Coquitlam Ultraviolet Disinfection Project, a $110-million facility built to silver LEED standards that, when open next fall, will clean water heading for at least a third of Metro Vancouver residents.
"We will have the safest water in the world," said Darrell Mussatto, chair of Metro Vancouver's utility board and mayor of North Vancouver city.
Mussatto said the UV plant is being built in response to federal regulations that came into effect after seven people died in 2000 when they drank E. coli-contaminated water in Walkerton, Ont.
Once the plant is finished, water from the Coquitlam reservoir - located in a restricted area at the top of Pipeline Road - will be pumped into eight units, each containing 40 UV lamps that will kill water-borne micro-organisms such as cryptosporidium and giardia. The UV disinfection is on top of the current ozonation, corrosion-control and chlorination processes.
Port Coquitlam Mayor Greg Moore, who is Metro Vancouver board chair, said the Coquitlam source now provides about 370 million litres of potable water a day but the UV plan will be sized to treat 1.2 billion litres daily for those who will call Metro Vancouver home in the next 20 years.
"We built a system for future capacity," he said at a news conference, noting the new UV plant won't affect the Coquitlam watershed.
Meanwhile, Mussatto said Metro Vancouver is looking to partner with BC Hydro for a run-of-the-river power proposal at the updated Capilano and Seymour water facilities in the North Shore. If such a project were to go ahead, he stressed it would use spillover water from the dams only. The Coquitlam dam isn't being considered at this time for such an initiative, he said.
