Categories: General
      Date: Apr 20, 2010
     Title: Vancouver Olympics Helped by Wastewater Resources

 
Tania Gheseger reports that, since 2003, Metro Vancouver has created a high-quality biosolids landscaping soil that has been used in many projects in parks, green spaces, boulevards, and road works. Metro Vancouver has worked in partnership with its member municipalities and, more recently, the private sector to grow this market. The soil is currently shaping the landscape of the Metro Vancouver region in some high-profile projects, including along the Sea to Sky Highway Improvement Project and surrounding the Olympic and Paralympic 2010 Winter Game Rings at YVR Vancouver International Airport.  

 Last fall, at WEFTEC, representatives from Whistler, BC and area engineering firms described the system for recovering heat from wastewater effluent at the Whistler Athletes' Village. "A District Energy System for the Whistler Athletes' Village was developed that utilizes waste heat available in the treated municipal wastewater effluent to provide more than 95% of the annual heating requirement for the Village. The system is unique in that it extracts low-temperature ambient heat from wastewater, making it flexible enough to provide both heating and cooling.... [This] is one of the first closed-looped heating and cooling district energy systems in the world."