Dawson sewage lagoon to go near ball diamonds

A new sewage lagoon in Dawson City, Yukon,willlikely belocated next to baseball diamonds due to a lack of alternative sites, says the engineer responsible for the project.

Kriss Sarson, the Yukon government engineer who is heading up the project, said Tuesday that he gave an update last week to Dawson council and the Trondek Hwech'in First Nation.

Sarson said the location at the Dome Road, near the diamonds, is to date the best and most affordable option for the lagoon.

That means people driving into the town of about 1,300 would see the lagoon near the community's entrance not something people would feel enthused about seeing, Sarson admitted.

"It's hard to dress up a lagoon. You talk about a sewage lagoon, everybody doesn't jump up and down and go, 'oh boy, let's have a ribbon-cutting event at the sewage lagoon,'" he said Tuesday.

"A lot of people don't like it because it is in the entrance to town. There's a lot of NIMBY not in my backyard which is fair. So I mean there's only so much we can do with that because a lagoon is fairly large and your hands are tied on what you can actually do to make it blend in."

Sarson said there are few other options for where to build the sewage treatment plant, which Dawson City has needed since the 1980s.

"Right now people may not like it, but there's no alternative out there that we see. So the reality is that, more than likely, this will have to be the avenue we'll have to pursue," he said.

Dawson has been scrambling to build a sewage treatment plant since the territorial court fined the town $5,000 in 2003 for dumping raw sewage into the Yukon River.

The town has been ordered to build a secondary treatment system by the end of 2008, a deadline it has told the court it cannot meet.

"We're kind of paying a price for a lot of years of things not being addressed," Deputy Mayor Dianna Andrew said. "The location is not one that was our first choice, but [we] can't seem to find the perfect spot."

It could take several years before construction begins on the $14 million facility, as environmental reviews and other paperwork are expected to hold up the project for two to three years.