Symbiotic EnviroTek look for county’s letter of intent

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

Symbiotic EnviroTek members have been working with Wheatland County for the last year to get the go-ahead for the first pilot project wastewater treatment solution to replace the septic field that has failed in Rosebud.
On Dec. 1 during the Wheatland County regular council meeting, the company visited the chambers to provide an update.
The company provided a microalgae wastewater treatment solution that also produces algal biomass that can be sold for a number of different applications including food and non-food products. Liquid wastes that have different components of nutrient streams can grow algae to be sold and used for an input to natural health products, animal feed, or bio industrial products.
“Terrific progress has been made on this project,” said Elizabeth Huculak, consultant for Symbiotic EnviroTek. “We knew that Rosebud has a problem and we’ve been working to apply the microalgae production system as wastewater treatment system for them.”
Huculak was a part of a committee that did a feasibility study in 2012 with Sustainability Resources to look at alternatives for ecological treatment. At that time, Wheatland County had identified five communities within the county that had wastewater issues and/or economic development issues.
“Consequently we met with members of Rosebud and evaluated the situation and they rose to the top of the pile in communities most ready to take on a project like this,” said Huculak.
If the county were to pass the motion for the company to do this, Symbiotic must follow certain Alberta Environment and Parks criteria, including the Teflon water quality where they did trial runs over the summer.
“We’ve been using the Rosebud wastewater to grow algae and prove that the discharge water quality meets the standards that the county needs and will qualify for the Alberta Environment water standards,” said Huculak. “That work has now been completed and it puts us in a position now to get the approval from council to proceed with this project.”
However, Wheatland County gave them a conditional approval to move forward on the project because they had not received the final draft of the letter of intent, which outlines the process Symbiotic EnviroTek has to follow.
The guidelines include submitting a registration under the code of practice to Alberta Environment to register it as a facility, a service agreement with the county and an implementation of site preparation work that the county will do in readiness for deployment of the field for next spring.
The cost of the whole field will come to $6 million with the wastewater coming to $3 million.
Wheatland County Councilor Ben Armstrong said he would like to see how this project operates before considering having it spread around the county.
“It looks like it’s a workable process,” said Armstrong. “It’s different and I know the system we had at Rosebud was starting to fail a little bit. We had to do something. These new initiatives come along and it was a good chance to try something different.”
He added that it’s less of a carbon footprint than a lagoon system.
The site preparation will start as soon as the ground thaws and go until May with the expectation of deploying the plant beginning in June.