Removing waste from water: Public tours Guelph's wastewater treatment plant

Guelph residents got a behind-the-scenes look Saturday at the city's newly renamed Waste Resources Recovery Centre.

"It more reflects what we're doing here with wastewater, in regards to how we process wastewater and all the exciting things we're doing in terms of energy management, meeting our energy goals and waste conservation," said Jayne Holmes, the head of infrastructure for the City of Guelph.

It was the first time the facility, located at 530 Wellington Street West, has opened its doors to the public in almost 20 years.

"Sewerage treatment in Guelph has been at the same location since 1903," said Tim Robertson, the division manager for wastewater services. "As the community's changed, as the community grew, so did the facility. This name change is a natural progression of slightly different technologies but also emphasizing the site process changes."

"We've been waiting awhile to invite people and the public back into our facility," said Holmes. "One thing we've noticed is that the residents of Guelph are very interested in water and conservation and so we find that, as they're walking around, there's a lot of great questions."

Workers at the treatment plant were on hand to answer those questions.

"That's great to have our residents really interested because we need their help in making sure that the things going down the drain are not going to affect our water going forward," added Holmes.

Jenny Bulnes brought her children to open house, promising them the answer to one important question.

"We told the kids today that we are coming to see how poop turns into water, so I think they're pretty fascinated to see how, what we put down the toilet that comes out clean water the other side here to the river. It's pretty fascinating."

Visitors also learned about testing wastewater for presence of COVID-19.

"I think a lot of people were surprised to hear that, how do they know all the numbers are going up and how do they knowing about all this before it actually happens?" said Holmes. "The reason is because at Guelph we are in partnership with [Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health] in terms wastewater testing and that's how you find out if the COVID numbers are going up. That's very important to figuring out what's coming our way and how we can prepare going forward."