A significant renovation at the Sarnia Water Pollution Control Centre (WPCC) is expected to further stabilize the city's water supply for the next few decades.
About $7.5 million has been earmarked for upgrades to the site at 333 St. Andrew St., which is being taken from the Sewer Infrastructure Reserve.
The work is being undertaken by Birnam Excavating Ltd.
The two phase project includes a new single storey control room, new conveyors and pollution control equipment, and a new truck loading ramp as well as new mixing and transfer pumps in the pumping galleries.
The first phase has been completed, which included replacement of the mixer and silos that store materials outside.
General Manager of Engineering and Operations David Jackson said the old equipment is beyond the end of its life and has been breaking down recently, causing them to bring in emergency repair technicians.
He said the old equipment is very specialized, and expensive to fix.
"Now, we're rehabilitating the building itself, and replacing most of the equipment that's inside the building," said Jackson. "So, we're adding a third centrifuge and looking at all the individual components and bringing in new equipment."
Jackson said it's a complex operation and, if everything goes smoothly, no one will notice a difference.
"We're hoping it can continue to operate for the next 20 to 30 years until it needs work again," he said. "It also provides some redundancy, we're adding some additional equipment so that when we take some equipment offline for maintenance, we'll have less impact to our day to day operations."
It's expected the work will wrap up by the end of 2025.