{"id":327838,"date":"2025-12-05T21:41:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/327838\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T21:41:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T21:41:30","slug":"proposed-sewage-treatment-plant-at-northern-ontario-ski-hill-is-raising-eyebrows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/327838\/","title":{"rendered":"Proposed sewage treatment plant at northern Ontario ski hill is raising eyebrows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Text<\/p>\n

Listen to this article<\/p>\n

Estimated 5 minutes<\/p>\n

The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

Temperatures are dropping and snow is falling at Searchmont Ski Resort, but a proposed water treatment project at the hill just north of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. has some local residents fired up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The owners of Searchmont \u2014 American-based Wisconsin Resorts Inc. \u2014 are waiting for the province to approve the construction<\/a> of an on-site sewage treatment plant.<\/p>\n

As the hill looks to expand its operations, which could mean additional hotels and restaurants, Searchmont says the facility would be necessary to keep up with current and future infrastructure desires.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If approved by the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, the wastewater plant would send treated sewage effluent into the Goulais River.<\/p>\n

Service to other businesses or nearby homes is not included in the application.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Covering roughly 2,000 square kilometres, the Goulais River runs from the Algoma highlands into Goulais Bay and Lake Superior. It\u2019s home to an assortment of fish and wildlife, most notably sturgeon, brook trout and wood turtles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kresin Engineering Corporation, a Sault-based firm responsible for the project, says the new system would treat and disinfect wastewater to meet ministry requirements before pumping treated water into the river system. <\/p>\n

But some people who live nearby are skeptical.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t trust the government to keep an eye on it. I think it will pollute the river,\u201d Liz Marion told CBC, whose family has lived on Goulais River for generations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Goulais River near Kirby’s Corner. (Les Leclair\/supplied)<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Kresin Engineering released its “assimilative capacity study,” which evaluated elements that can be of concern, such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and other potentially toxic contaminants.<\/p>\n

Wayne Parker, a University of Waterloo professor with years of expertise in sewage treatment, read the report and was satisfied with the findings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said the proposed plant itself has a \u201cfairly traditional\u201d design that is in use in many other parts of the province and beyond.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf appropriately treated, it should be fine,\u201d Parker said. \u201cI see there were some recommendations that came out of that study that would presumably go into the design of the sewage treatment facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Parker noted that the technology isn\u2019t 100 per cent risk free when it comes to environmental impacts. But neither is the current septic sysyem Searchmont has been using, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf [the current system] is near or at its capacity, or over its existing capacity, there is the potential for environmental effects from the current technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea of any risks at all raises red flags for Joanie McGuffin, the executive director of the Lake Superior Watershed Conservancy who enjoys kayaking along the Goulais River every year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She believes if anything were to go wrong with the proposed sewage plant, then Goulais River and the breadth of species that rely on it could be placed under tremendous threat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really scary for the future,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have a provincial government who is doing a lot of things to undermine a lot of environmental protections that have taken decades to set into place. If we just let development go ahead, it\u2019s costing us all in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know what phosphorus does \u2014 we\u2019ve seen what it does in the Great Lakes with algae blooms. We don\u2019t want to see that on Goulais Bay, but that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to get faced with if we don\u2019t pay attention to what\u2019s going into these waters.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the ski resort, a sewage treatment plant could be its ticket to expanding operations and boosting revenue streams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Searchmont general manager Kim Burkhardt told CBC their engineers considered various alternatives, but that the proposal as it stands today emerged as the only reasonable fit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re looking to grow and make this an amazing hill and to add amenities, and we\u2019re just not able to do that until we get that sewage treatment plant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Middle-agedKim Burkhardt, general manager of Searchmont Ski Resort, says the wastewater facility is imperative for future operations. (Alex Flood\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Hundreds of people who live along or nearby the river system have joined a Facebook group called \u201cWe Must Guard The Goulais River.\u201d There, locals have been expressing their opinions and concerns on the proposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marion and her husband have long enjoyed fishing, kayaking and swimming in the river. But she finds taking part in those hobbies difficult to imagine if the plant is built.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to go into the river with the thought there\u2019s sewage running down the river,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s so many of us along the river \u2014 we\u2019re all going to be affected.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public comment period<\/a> for the proposal, which was initially scheduled to end last month, has been extended to January 12, 2025.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Timelines for the wastewater project haven\u2019t been determined as the application is currently under review by the ministry. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 5 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-327838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}