Energy and Our Water Supply

Born and raised in Saskatchewan, Vince Corkery moved around Western Canada before settling in Alberta 23 years ago. "I spent time working as a municipal engineering consultant in Manitoba and also on the Natural Gas Distribution Program in Saskatchewan. I gained an appreciation for the importance of energy to our standard of living and the economic well-being of Western Canadians." In 1992, Corkery joined the Gold Bar Wastewater Treatment Plant in Edmonton, Alberta, and has been a permanent fixture at the facility ever since.

EPCOR’s Gold Bar Plant currently provides wastewater treatment services to more than 750,000 people in the greater Edmonton area and serves both the city of Edmonton and Capital Region customers.

"Gold Bar is more like a water resource recovery facility than a typical wastewater plant," Corkery explains. "We take in two raw products - the wastewater that comes from residential, commercial and industrial customers, and the combined sewer flows from the street runoff in the older parts of Edmonton."

From the raw wastewater, the plant produces four products: high quality effluent returned to the North Saskatchewan River, biosolids for nutrient and energy recovery, biogas for energy recovery and reclaimed wastewater for industrial re-use.

Corkery says that collaboration with industry has always been an integral part of the business at Gold Bar. "Reclaimed water came to the forefront when pressures on water resources for industry intersected with the development of low-energy membrane filtration systems.  The result was the introduction of the treatment facility for Suncor as a means to provide reclaimed water to support their desulphurization project."

The treatment facility for Suncor opened at Gold Bar in 2005, and at the time of its opening, was the largest industrial reclaimed water plant of its kind in Canada. The facility provides up to 15 million litres per day of reclaimed wastewater to Suncor and Air Products.  

The industry partnership with Suncor has been instrumental in establishing reclaimed water as a credible source of industrial process water in Canada and North America. "While wastewater plants were considered unconventional sources of industrial water at the time, Suncor now prefers the reclaimed water as it is more stable and less prone to upset in comparison to raw river water." says Corkery.

The successful operation of the Suncor plant at Gold Bar has paved the way for reclaimed water to be considered as part of the overall solution for the Alberta Industrial Heartland/Capital Region Water Management Framework.  

"The lessons learned by the Alberta Industrial Heartland/Capital Region Water Management Framework are being used by Alberta Environment to drive water policy and water resource planning throughout Alberta," says Corkery. "With the focus on dwindling water resources and the pressure on industry to lead the way in terms of reclaiming water, plants like EPCOR’s Gold Bar Plant, working together with industry, play a large role in ensuring sustainable water supply for all Albertans."

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