KITCHENER RECEIVES $1-MILLION GRANT FOR FURTHER STUDY
​Victoria Park Lake sediment experiment may help
​municipalities across province
LONG RANGE PLANS
City of Kitchener engineer and Victoria Lake Project Manager Melissa Ryan, left, and Stantec Consulting Project Manager Steve Brown visit the dredging operation at Victoria Park Lake. They hope the sediment being dug out of the lake will eventually transform into usable topsoil.
Photo by Helen Hall

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By Helen Hall
Kitchener Citizen​
   The dredging of Victoria Park Lake is more than just a stormwater project now; it’s part of a scientific experiment.
   “It’s funny how dirt can be exciting,” said City of Kitchener engineer Melissa Ryan, who is the design and construction manager for Victoria Park Lake.
   Kitchener and its partners at the Region of Waterloo and Stantec Consulting Ltd. have come up with what they hope is an innovative plan for dealing with the 60,000 tonnes of sediment that is being dredged from the bottom of the lake.
   They hope that, in time, they can turn the sediment into topsoil that can used for other projects, and save the money Kitchener would have paid to dispose of it in a landfill.
   The sediment excavated from stormwater ponds is considered waste by the Ministry of the Environment if it has higher than acceptable levels of chemicals like sodium and chloride (from road salt), organic materials (such as goose feces) and water, and has to be disposed of in a landfill.
   Stormwater ponds are holding areas for water that runs off hard surfaces after rain or when snow melts. Sediment collects in the runoff and settles in the ponds.
   Ryan said staff from the city, the region and Stantec began to talk about the price of disposing of the sediment from the lake, then they came up with an alternative plan.
   The sediment from Victoria Park Lake will not be buried, but stored at the Waterloo Region Landfill in Cambridge for several years.
   During that time, it will be monitored, and data will be kept on the changes in its composition. It is hoped that after a few years the excess water will evaporate, the fecal matter will decompose into fertilizer, and the level of some of the chemicals will go down, allowing it to meet the ministry guidelines for topsoil.
   “We’re going to capture data over several years,” Ryan said of the testing of the Victoria Park Lake sediment.
   “We want to build a better understanding of what happens to it over time.”
Steve Brown, who is Stantec’s project manager for Victoria Park Lake, said he believes Kitchener may be the first city to try a project like this.
   Brown said the lake is also being deepened to improve circulation, armour stone rocks are being put around the edges, and a reservoir is being built at its entrance to try and trap sediment before it reaches the lake.
   If Kitchener’s project is successful, it could change the way Kitchener and other Ontario cities deal with disposing of sediment from stormwater ponds - saving money and landfill space.
   The City of Kitchener recently received a $1-million grant from the Province
​of ​ Ontario through its Showcasing Water Innovation Program to expand this
​project to look beyond Victoria Park Lake.
   Ryan said the money will be used for a feasibility study, which will take
​years to complete. The city will look at its own data from the Victoria Park
Lake sediment, see if any other municipalities have any similar data,
​look at other soils that could be rehabilitated, and see what regulations the
ministry would put on using the rehabilitated soil.
   Ryan said the outcome of this study could be that a separate soil rehabilitation site is built rather than taking sediment to be stored at a landfill during its transformation.
   Although Victoria Park Lake has been around since 1895, stormwater ponds became very popular in the 1980s and 1990s, according to Ryan. Now, many municipalities are faced with the cost of cleaning them up.
   Ryan said that Kitchener is ahead of other cities because of its newly-created stormwater utility. The utility knows how much money it collects from residents each year and can plan on which projects to complete.
  Ryan said there are over 100 stormwater ponds in the city, all of which will eventually need cleaning - which makes looking for cost savings important.
   “We said ‘Lets get the ball rolling now,’ ” Ryan explained of the reason for expanding the project to look at sediment rehabilitation in general.
But Ryan said the city is years away from knowing what the outcome will be.
   “I want to be optimistically cautious,” Ryan said about the project results.