Council for the RM of Ste. Anne has approved a significant land purchase for the future site of their lagoon expansion.
In the next few years, Deputy Reeve Randy Eros says his municipality’s lagoon will run out of space and, before that happens, an upgrade is needed. With that in mind, Council has moved to buy an 800,000 dollar piece of land immediately adjacent to their existing lagoon. He says acquiring this 40-acre property is the first step in the roughly 2.5 million dollar plan to increase the lagoon's size and general cleanliness.
“This should look after municipal needs for four decades,” states Eros, who says he does not want Ste. Anne’s growth inhibited by a lagoon that has reached its capacity. “To me, good municipal planning is planning for the future; being able to act and not have to react.”
That principle, he says applies to both population growth and taking care of the environment. Eros says building a new lagoon offers his RM the unique opportunity to improve certain processes.
“For us, one of the exciting pieces is a constructed wetland,” he emphasizes.
As Eros explains, the Manitoba government has very specific regulations when it comes to lagoon output. In this part of the province, all bodies of water flow into Lake Winnipeg, a basin already known for its high toxicity. Whereas older lagoons tend to push harmful chemicals, like phosphorous, to the bottom with a flocculating agent to prevent it from leaching out, Ste. Anne’s new lagoon will look to remove it completely. A specially-designed filtration system made out of cattails will naturally pull the phosphorous from the waters, purifying the lagoon. The system is being modelled after similar setups in La Broquerie and St. Pierre.
In favour of this forward-thinking plan, the province has offered to pay for up to 1 million dollars of the project’s total cost.
Eros anticipates construction will begin in the coming months and expects the entire expansion will be completed in about two years’ time.
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