February 8, 2007
Serena Willoughby, Staff Writer, The Liberal

Unique program helps purify moraine water

Richmond Hill - Ever wonder what the town does with all that snow it clears off your roads?
Go to the Richmond Hill Operations Centre on Elgin Mills Road and look in the parking lot behind the building. You will see mounds collected from Yonge Street and other arterial routes.

But by the time it gets there, it is no longer the fluffy white stuff your children use to make snowmen.

It is full of sand, oil, salt and sediment; think of it as a big pile of what may be coating your car right now.

So what happens to it when winter ends?

Because of the town's close relationship with the Oak Ridges Moraine, staffers must ensure salt and sediment don't get into surface water.

So they have developed a system, the only one of its kind in Canada, to make sure only clean water goes into the ecosystem.

Last month the Environment Ministry began studying the system to see if the science can be applied elsewhere. One of the reasons the system works so well is because it uses filtration methods found in nature, water resources manager John Nemeth said.

The collected snow runoff is directed through an oil and grit separator, which also monitors the consistency of pollutants in the runoff.

The unit causes electro-chemical and biological processes to bind heavy metals and nutrients to the sediment and reduce the amount of chloride.

The runoff then flows into a catch basin with plants that use salt in their growing process, such as bull rushes.

The salt is absorbed by the plants, further filtering the water. Then the runoff enters a tributary of the Rouge River as clean water.

All municipalities have management plans to minimize the amount of road salt they use, since salt eventually gets into our streams and rivers.

But collecting snow and filtering out salt minimizes how much goes into the ecosystem.

"In the 905 area, we have the advantage of being able to plan these systems better," Mr. Nemeth said.

In Toronto, snow is sometimes collected and dumped directly into the Don River, he said.

Another way Richmond Hill minimizes salt discharge is by spraying a brine solution using less salt, rather than straight salt pellets.

Through initiatives such as the snow filtration system, Richmond Hill has become a Canadian leader in water and waste water initiatives.

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