Alberta announces $50M for industrial wastewater plant expansion

Construction at the Arrow Utilities Wastewater Treatment Plant in Strathcona County on March 18, 2024. (Matt Marshall/CTV News Edmonton)

The province will commit $50 million over three years to expand the Arrow Utilities Wastewater Treatment Plant in Strathcona County, officials announced on Monday.

Arrow Utilities was formerly known as the Alberta Capital Region Wastewater Commission, and the plant will support communities throughout the Edmonton area.

Officials say the plant is needed to provide additional treatment of wastewater that can be sold for industrial purposes.

"That equates to about 35 million litres per day that would be taken out of the North Saskatchewan River that will be replaced with this facility," Devin Dreeshen, minister for transport and economic corridors, told reporters on Monday.

"Just putting that into perspective, that's 14 Olympic-sized swimming pools every day that would be drawn out of the North Saskatchewan River that now will not have to be."

"Not only does this help thousands of businesses and key industries in the capital region and surrounding municipalities, but it will help lower the utility bills for more than 400,000 residential ratepayers," Nathan Neudorf, minister of affordability and utilities, said.

"The hope is that this could cut the rates by more than 60 per cent for some of those ratepayers."

The treated wastewater will be used by a number of businesses, including in the production of hydrogen at the Air Products' hydrogen plant, which will eliminate the need to use water treated for residential use.

The government says this is part of Alberta's hydrogen growth strategy.

The province is hoping the hydrogen economy will bring tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic activity during the construction phase, and thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars during the operations phase.

The money is part of the 2024 budget recently announced by the province.