Owen Sound is making progress on taking measures to prevent overflows of raw sewage from the cities waste water treatment plant into Georgian Bay.
Councillor Bill Twaddle says this is something the city as been working on and talking about for a number of years and reports documenting problems and concerns about sewage outflows have been available to the public for years.
He says one major initiative that will ease the pressure on the sewage treatment plant is to separate all the storm and sanitary sewers in the city.
Twaddle the separation of the two systems means during heavy rainfall events there will be less water flowing into the treatment plant which will reduce the risk of any sewage overflows.
He says there is a major two year initiative underway to help downtown business owners disconnect their down spouts from the sanitary sewer system.
Twaddle says will have a profound impact on the amount of rain water that goes to the sewage treatment plant.
In addition he says the city is spending millions of dollars this summer to increase the ability of the plant to absorb these heavy rainfall events.
As for upgrades to the sewage treatment plant, Twaddle says those are probably at least 10 years down the road.
He says while it may see a long time todo this, there are many lengthy and complicated environmental hoops the city has to jump through before any work can begin.
Twaddle also is confident that there will be Federal and Provincial infrastructure money available to fund this project which has an estimated price tag of around 45 million dollars.
