'Floatables' flow as Halifax removes sewage screens

First a sewage treatment plant failed, and now the Halifax Regional Municipality is giving up on attempts to screen out solids from flowing into the harbour.

About 80 million litres of wastewater has been flowing into Halifax harbour every day since January, when a sewage treatment plant malfunctioned and flooded following a power outage.

The solids, called "floatables," were screened at seven combined sewer outfall stations on the waterfront, but the screens were never designed to work continuously. So last week, Halifax Water, the municipality's water commission, was forced to remove them.

"It just became impractical to try and continuously clean them and have the screens running continuously," James Campbell, spokesman for the Halifax Harbour Solutions project, told CBC News on Thursday.

"The decision was made that rather than risk damaging the machinery, to remove the screens."

Once the floodgates were open, sections of the shoreline became littered once again with floatables.

One of the outfalls spews sewage and solids under the visitor information centre on the Halifax boardwalk. The sight and smell hasn't gone unnoticed by tour guide operators on the Harbour Hopper.

"Today, my whole boat was plugging their nose," one guide told CBC News.

Campbell said the situation will stay this way until the Halifax plant is back in operation next spring.

"It's an unfortunate setback for the Halifax side, but the project is still carrying on," he said. "The plant in Dartmouth is operating, the Halifax plant will again be operating and a third plant will be operating in Herring Cove later this summer."

The municipality still doesn't know why the $54-million plant near the naval dockyard malfunctioned on Jan. 14.

What is known is that a power failure set off a sequence of events that eventually caused the station to overflow with raw sewage. Several kilometres of cable and other electronic equipment were destroyed.

The Halifax plant was opened in the fall of 2007. Bacteria counts in the harbour plummeted, allowing the municipality to reopen public beaches last summer for the first time in decades.