The new sewage treatment plant along Lake Street in Port Hope cost $36 million to construct and features cutting edge technologies & other fancy equipment. But like most high-budget projects in the country, this one also has some controversy behind it.

As proposed, both the federal and provincial governments will shoulder one-fourth of the cost, while the ratepayers were arranged to take care of what remained of the facility’s budget, which was originally pegged at $27 million.

According to Port Hope officials, the added $9 million is due to the unexpected cleanup of PCBs or Polychlorinated biphenyls around the old plant in 2008 – something that resulted in a halt of work, fees for hauling toxic waste, and subsequent penalties coming from the project’s contractor.

But to Sarah Clayton, a resident of Port Hope, this added fee is just plain unacceptable. She notes that the contaminated soil should have been part of the agreement in 2001 between Port Hope and the Federal Government that indicates 40,000 cubic meters of industrial waste in Port Hope to be up for remediation.

She points out that the treatment facility property could possible be contaminated with federal waste.

Municipal engineer Peter Angelo is puzzled as to why Port Hope was unaware of this contamination before entering into a legal agreement, but Mayor Linda Thompson commented that she’s exhausted efforts to fit the material into the federal clean up.

As of the moment, the municipality is concentrating on reducing the financial impact of the new sewage plant on the community.