Province reverses course, recommends CEC hearing, date TBA
After an earlier decision this year to forgo a Manitoba Clean Environment Commission (CEC) review of a proposed wastewater lagoon to be built on a Hutterite colony in the RM Armstrong, the provincial government reversed course and will ask the CEC to review the file.
The Crystal Spring Hutterite Colony had applied to the province for permission to build a wastewater lagoon after it bought land in Armstrong around the time of the COVID pandemic. The colony is on the west side of Road 15E, which forms the RM of Armstrong-RM of Gimli border. Representatives from the colony had appeared at an Armstrong council meeting in February 2020, saying the colony will have about 100 people, 15,000 chickens and will manufacture parts for hog barns. The province’s notice of environment act proposal stated the lagoon will be designed to treat wastewater for an expected population of 250 people (see Feb 20, 2020 online edition of the Express).
In addition to human manure, the lagoon will also treat abattoir waste.
Willow Creek, which flows through the Hutterite colony, runs east into the RM of Gimli and drains into Lake Winnipeg through a residential subdivision and marshland.
Residents in both Armstrong and Gimli are opposed to the construction of the lagoon, saying through various public statements, the media and letters to the provincial government that the size of the new colony is tantamount to that of a small town and the wastewater effluent will degrade the environment and compromise human health.
Among other effects, they say the lagoon will subject neighbouring residents to noxious odours and airborne contaminants, potentially poison groundwater and surface water through lagoon cell leakage or heavy precipitation events that have habitually flooded Road 106N and the swampy parcel of land on which the lagoon is to be built, destroy fish spawning habitat in Willow Creek and the wetlands into which it drains, and add to the nutrient loading of Lake Winnipeg, causing more toxic and destructive algal blooms.
In April of this year the province allowed people to appeal the minister’s decision to not recommend a CEC environmental review. In June the department of environment and climate change held a “community learning session” about the lagoon in Fraserwood in the RM of Armstrong.
RM of Gimli resident Jeff Smith was one of the people who had written to the provincial government with concerns about its decision to not recommend a CEC review.
Smith said it appears that the number of people who attended the learning session on June 4 and the arguments they raised were “significant enough to warrant a change in the government’s approach.”
Minister of environment and climate change Mike Moyes wrote to Smith last week, saying he had decided to ask the CEC to hold a public hearing.
“I am writing in response to your email appealing the Director of Environmental Approval’s decision not to recommend a Clean Environment Commission hearing for Crystal Spring Colony Farms Ltd’s proposal to construct a domestic wastewater lagoon in the Rural Municipality of Armstrong,” said Moyes in a letter to Smith with a date stamp of Sept. 2, 2025. “After careful consideration, and in accordance with section 27(2)(a) of The Environment Act, I have decided to request the Clean Environment Commission hold a public hearing on the proposal.”
The Manitoba Clean Environment Commission is an arm’s-length provincial government agency that was established under The Environment Act (1988) to offer advice and recommendations to the government regarding the management of the environment. Its primary role is to “provide opportunities for the Manitoba public to play a part in ensuring the protection of our environment.”
The current CEC membership includes a number of university professors, a cattle and livestock owner, a former First Nations chief, a climate planner and a former provincial deputy minister, according to the CEC website. The province generally refers projects to the CEC when there is a “great deal” of public concern that can have a significant impact on a large number of Manitobans.
In addition to the many residents opposed to the lagoon, Lake Winnipeg commercial fishers raised concerns in March about the province’s decision to not recommend a Clean Environment Commission review. Fishers said the lagoon could pose an environmental hazard to fish spawning grounds and the health of Lake Winnipeg, and urged the government to take a “precautionary” approach before granting a license for the lagoon (see March 20, 2025 online edition of the Express).
Public feedback that had been sent to the province is available online through the provincial environmental assessment and licensing’s public registry webpage.
“Lake Winnipeg and the surrounding wetlands, including Willow Creek have already reached a crisis level due to phosphorus and human destruction. I am a permanent resident in this community and I’ve watched the lake and wetlands deteriorate every year,” wrote one resident. “This past year nobody could swim for a large majority of the summer due to algae that results from phosphorus coming from the Winnipeg sewage leakage and runoff of fertilizers from farmer’s fields. Dead fish washed up on shore, in addition to millions of zebra mussels, and for the first time this year there were no frogs along the lake. The lake is already in terrible shape, the last thing this community needs is more destruction to the environment, or more nitrogen and phosphorus seeping into the lake and creeks.”
Another resident who has lived in the area of Road 15E and Road 106N for over 40 years said the drainage “flows very full and heavy” during years of excessive precipitation, and it will back up on the corner where the proposed lagoon is to built, leading to possible environmental contamination.
A fourth-generation farmer who lives near Willow Creek wrote that water is “one of our greatest assets” and we “should be protecting it.”
Another resident told the government that it knows the lagoon is “not good” for residents.
“[Redacted] proposed lagoon sight [sic] and am totally against it, that discharge will be emptied into willow creek which runs past my place in [redacted] my grand children swim in our channels, we fish in those channels, and we have picnics along the shore lines [sic], stop this waste water [sic] treatment plant from ever being set up, you know as well as me that it is not good for us,” they wrote.
Smith said the letter he received from Moyes does not set a date for the CEC hearing.
The hearing date has not yet been posted on the public registry, which is current to June 23, 2025, and was viewed on Sept. 5.
To view the Crystal Spring Colony wastewater lagoon file, including public comments, the geotechnical review and hydraulic assessment, visit the province’s environmental assessment and licensing’s public registry webpage and search the name or File No. 6193.00.
