TransAqua says improvements seen over last four years

Between June 6th and November 1st, TransAqua, a wastewater management facility for Greater Moncton, transported about 9,000 tonnes of biosolids out of the tri-communities.

“We wouldn’t want to flush our toilet and have it go directly back into a river, so that’s why we need to remove the wastewater or we need to remove the biosolids from wastewater, we need to remove different bacteria like e coli to make sure the water is healthy and safe, not just for people but for the environment,” said Velta Tomsons, the Communications and Marketing Manager for the company.

The company turns biosolids into grade A compost which goes back to the community.

“12,000 tonnes goes back into the community directly and then another 12,000 tonnes goes to farmers,” said Tomsons.

“We give it away for free to the residents of the tri-community. You can come and pick it up not just once or twice but as many times as you want if you’ve got a big garden.”

New this year, the use of its new Five Rivers facility for the first full summer.

It’s one of many changes that TransAqua has made over the last four years since becoming aware of odour complaints from the community.

Tomsons says the company immediately looked at their process to see what could be improved on.

“The air vents were clogged. They were not blowing air which meant the compost was not composting the way that it should,” she said.

“We had removed the addition of lime in our process and we found that that had a massive impact on when it comes to smell. We weren’t covering every single one of our piles.”

To date, TransAqua has spent $5M in improvements including more GORE covers to trap the smell, additional closed top trailers for transportation and increasing the bark to biosolids ratio.

“For example this month there were only I think three smell complaints,” she said.

“That’s a big improvement. In previous months, it might be, or in previous years, in the double digits for sure.”

However, smell was not the only improvement.

Tomsons says in the last four years, since the implementation of their upgrade project, TransAqua is now removing almost double the volume of biosolids from the wastewater:

• 2020 it removed 11,200 tonnes when it was still a chemically assisted plant
• 2021, when it switched to biological treatment, it removed 16,400 tonnes
• In 2022, 17,100 tonnes were removed
• 19,400 in 2023
• And 21,500 tonnes are projected for 2024.

Additionally, approximately 33,000 tonnes of compost were given away between the tri-communities and farmers in Five Rivers.

“When it comes to population growth, the more people that are living in the tri-communities, that means that there’s going to be more wastewater and more biosolids,” said Tomsons.

As for what to expect in 2025, Tomsons says a number of improvements are on the docket including expanding its Moncton facility, doing another self assessment and she says that TransAqua is committed to transporting more biosolids to Five Rivers during the summer season.

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