Major construction activity resumes on troubled $3.9 billion North Shore sewage treatment plant

Officials with Metro Vancouver Regional District are hoping to restore some public confidence in the beleaguered project of building the new North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant, with major construction activity now ramping up with a brand new different team of contractors following extensive delays, major construction cost overruns, and ongoing litigation.

It was first revealed in March 2024 that the new sewage treatment plant cost in the District of North Vancouver had soared to $3.86 billion — up from $700 million in 2018 when construction work first began based on the original schedule for a 2020 completion.

The budget escalated to $1.058 billion in 2021, and the regional district formally terminated the contract with Acciona Infrastructure Canada in 2022, alleging that the original contractor had abandoned the project, completed sub-standard work to date, and could not control the project’s costs and schedule.

Acciona, a major multinational construction and engineering giant based in Spain, is also a lead contractor for other major projects in the region, including the new Pattullo Bridge, SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension, and SkyTrain Expo Line’s Surrey-Langley extension.

Acciona filed a lawsuit seeking $250 million in damages against the regional district, which subsequently filed a $500 million countersuit of its own. Acciona alleged that there were major issues with the small site and ground conditions for such a facility, and that the regional district made numerous major changes to the design mid-construction, including turning this into a tertiary treatment facility, which requires added space for the extra equipment.

There are up to three levels of sewage treatment — primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary treatment loosely physically filters out large 60% of the solids in the water, such as debris and grit. Secondary treatment removes 93% of the solids in the water following primary treatment, and it includes both physical and biological processes for its filtering.

Tertiary treatment is a highly advanced level of treatment that removes 99% of the solids in the water, including harmful contaminants. After the completion of primary and secondary treatments, it involves using ultraviolet treatment for disinfection, before releasing the treated water into Burrard Inlet.

The existing 1961-built Lions Gate Wastewater Treatment Plant below the north end of the Lions Gate Bridge only provides primary treatment of sewage waters. This facility will be decommissioned upon the completion and operation of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Similarly, the regional district’s $9.9 billion new Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, currently under the preliminary stages of construction near Vancouver International Airport, will be built to a tertiary treatment standard. Similarly, the existing 1963-built Iona Island plant only provides primary treatment.

One of the reasons the regional district is pursuing various new or upgraded sewage treatment plant projects is to comply with upcoming federal requirements. In 2012, the federal government enacted a law mandating a minimum of secondary treatment for all sewage treatment plants, with compliance required by 2030. However, the regional district has chosen to exceed this standard by implementing tertiary treatment.

When construction on the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant first began in 2018, the project’s design provided primary and secondary treatment. The tertiary treatment component was added later on.

To achieve the original design of primary and secondary treatment capabilities, the regional district created a multi-level stacked design facility on the 7.6-acre former industrial site near the North Vancouver waterfront — a site previously used as a BC Rail rail yard, located just north of Seaspan’s main shipyard hub.

“Stacked facilities are used in areas where there’s less area, where there’s not enough area to do a campus-style layout,” said Joe Cohrs, a project manager for the regional district, during a construction site tour of the partially-built facility on Wednesday.

He says that during the early stages of the planning process, the regional district looked at stacked sewage treatment plant facilities in Boston and Singapore as examples to follow. The site and stacked configuration were chosen due to the close proximity of existing sewerage infrastructure, and the limited industrial land available on the North Shore.

Replacing Acciona, the regional district has contracted PCL Construction and AECOM to finish the project. The total estimated contract price for both companies to complete the work is $1.95 billion, which is a part of the overall $3.86 billion project cost.

Cohrs says the regional district has a “target-cost style” contract with PCL, which incentivizes the company to work towards the estimated contract price.

“If they exceed that budget, there’s penalties in their contract, and if they come under that budget, they have enhancements and incentives for that budget as well,” Cohrs said.

Mike Hurley, the chair of the regional district’s board of directors and the Mayor of Burnaby, added, “We’re very confident that it will be delivered for what we have now budgeted. We believe that we have the right team in place to deliver this, and we’re very confident, again, that this will be a high quality project delivered within this budget. And we look forward to moving forward with a great project that it is.”

To cover the steep increase in the project’s costs, Metro Vancouver households will see their annual sewerage fees from the regional district increase by $875 starting in 2025.

“I’m very angry that we got to this point. But I absolutely acknowledge the burden that’s been placed on taxpayers here,” Hurley continued, before adding that the $875 average increase per household “is still very good value for money and what we deliver for the region, the critical services we delivery day in and day out.”

PCL and AECOM were initially hired in 2022 to perform early construction work, including repairs on the previous work completed by Acciona. They also had the option to negotiate the much larger main contract for completing the full project, which was ultimately exercised.

According to the regional district, all 1,500 serious concrete deficiencies have been repaired by PCL during the previous early construction work process.

Cohrs notes that PCL crews will primarily be focusing on concrete pours over the next 12 months. Previously, Acciona completed half of the project’s 2.8 million cubic ft of concrete pours.

As the concrete form of the plant rises, the installation of piping and mechanical equipment will also progress. Over 900 pieces of water treatment equipment, more than 6,000 instruments and control devices, and 800 km of electrical cabling will be installed.

It was also highlighted that the very first structural steel components for the plant arrived at the site last week, with installation expected to begin later this week.

So far, Cohrs is “very happy” with the “very high quality work” being performed by PCL.

Currently, just over 100 construction workers are on-site. The workforce is expected to peak between 2026 and 2028, with up to 700 workers on-site during that period.

As well, there are five tower cranes soar above the site, assisting with the extensive concrete pours, along with eight smaller cranes.

From east to west, the facility will span a length of over 400 metres, but with varying heights depending on the location. The tallest section will be on the western end of the facility, where two digester tanks — integral to the primary treatment process — reach a height of 36 metres (118 ft) or over 11 storeys.

The centre of the facility is dedicated to the secondary treatment process, including two massive pools of water stacked on top of each other inside the plant. Each clarifier pool is equivalent to about three Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Based on the regional district’s schematic layout of the facility, the tertiary treatment facilities have much smaller spatial requirements than primary and secondary treatment.

Due to the stacked configuration, the plant features extra-thick structural concrete walls, especially to support the immense weight of the stacked pools.

Additionally, the building is structurally reinforced to a post-disaster seismic standard — it is being built to withstand an exceptionally powerful once in 2,475-year earthquake. Such resilient designs are the new standard in BC, following the provincial government’s 2023 changes to the building seismic codes. Furthermore, the floors of the plant are being built on a higher elevation than the site’s ground level to protect the facility from coastal flooding, given the location’s low elevation and very close proximity to Burrard Inlet.

If all goes as planned, PCL will finish the new plant by 2030 — a full decade after the original targeted completion date.

The new plant will reuse the existing treated water outfall pipe located next to the Lions Gate Bridge, where the existing plant is located. Construction has already reached completion on the new pump station under the bridge and the two-km-long underground conveyance piping system from the new plant to the pump station.

When operational, the plant will have a throughput of 102 megalitres of treated sewage water per day — equivalent to about 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools of wastewater circulating through the plant’s treatment processes every day on average. It is estimated about 15 tons of solids will be removed from the water on a daily basis.

This new plant offers greater capacity than the existing Lions Gate Wastewater Treatment Plant and is designed to meet the long-term needs of up to 300,000 residents living across the North Shore communities of the District of West Vancouver, the City of North Vancouver, and the District of North Vancouver. Currently, the North Shore has a population of over 210,000, which is projected to increase to 239,000 by 2030, 266,000 by 2040, and 292,000 by 2050, according to the regional district’s latest population growth forecasts.

Upon the completion of the new plant, the existing plant will be decommissioned, and the site will be rehabilitated before its ownership is transferred to the Squamish Nation.

Source