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Overhauling the traditional view of water treatment and waste-water services in Alberta could allow cash-strapped municipalities to unbridle themselves from weighty infrastructure projects.

Construction of a small-scale pilot facility is expected to start this month on a parcel of undeveloped land on the edge of St. Albert, the first phase in establishing a research hub exploring a new water management philosophy.

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This plant will effectively be a lab for scientists to test and tweak their technology before they build a full-sized facility and accompanying water self-sufficient subdivision with the ability for energy and nutrient resource recovery.

The current large-scale centralized waste-water treatment system, which “is typically the most expensive and polluting of all options,” said University of Alberta’s professor of public health Nicholas Ashbolt, is heavy in energy use that relies on treating all household water to the same high quality, then treating all sewage organics using more energy.

That ignores the fact not all water needs to be uniformly treated because a vast majority of treated water will be used for largely non-potable purposes.

That’s where the Resource Recovery Centre — a collaborative research facility supported by various levels of government and public and private groups — comes in.