Although Lake Winnipeg may be further compromised if a proposed wastewater treatment lagoon is approved by the provincial government, the RM of Armstrong’s reeve said they’ve come to an impasse over the potential use of the Gimli Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP).
Reeve Garry Wasylowski said he and his council tried to engage Gimli council over the past year and a half, or thereabouts, to see whether the Gimli WWTP can treat waste from the new Harbour Hutterite colony (formerly called the Crystal Spring colony) located in his municipality.
Armstrong tried to “make this work,” said Wasylowski, but they were stymied by Gimli’s “stalling tactics.”
“Offering [the WWTP] is one thing. I’m not going to say [Gimli council] haven’t offered it,” said Wasylowski. “But at the same time when it came down to find ways to get it done, Gimli stalled every which way they could.”
Representatives from Crystal Spring had met with a previous iteration of Armstrong council in February 2020 to provide information about what its forthcoming colony in Armstrong would entail. In 2023, the colony submitted an application to the provincial government for a licence for a proposed wastewater lagoon, which will be built close to the Armstrong-Gimli municipal border.
The proposed lagoon has received strong opposition from residents in Armstrong and Gimli, tourism operators, Gimli council and environmental organizations, which fear it will further pollute Lake Winnipeg with additional phosphorus loading.
That’s why Wasylowski engaged colony representatives and made several attempts to engage Gimli council on an alternative treatment option while the lagoon was still being considered for approval by the province, he said. Those attempts included a joint meeting with Mike Moyes, provincial minister of environment and climate change.
But Wasylowski said they hit an impasse with Gimli council, which had indicated it was receptive to the idea of offering its WWTP to the colony but failed to follow through by repeatedly “stalling” and has now gone radio silence.
“If they were going to offer their treatment plant — and I want to make it clear that there was no acceptance by the colony — and [Gimli] wanted the support of the RM of Armstrong, we needed to meet with the provincial environment minister, find out what the terms were, find out the costs, the capacity and so on. Some people in government were unsure if Gimli has the capacity, but the RM of Gimli says they do,” said Wasylowski.
To that end, Wasylowski said a joint meeting was set up with Moyes with the Gimli WWTP as “the agenda” and that this had been “agreed upon by both councils.” But things went sideways at the last minute.
“The day before the meeting, we get an email from the RM of Gimli saying here’s the agenda, we’re going to talk about more consultation, we’re going to talk about other [matters]. This was a clear tactic to stall without a doubt,” said Wasylowski. “We proceeded to set up more meetings with Gimli and they consistently cancelled them. Me and the [Armstrong] CAO, in fact, went to a meeting that [Gimli] didn’t even tell us they cancelled; no one from Gimli showed up. It was clear that their intent was to stall and not move forward with this project … and get Armstrong to go along with their stalling tactics.”
His view was underscored by Gimli Mayor Kevin Chudd’s presentation to the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission (CEC) last week in opposition to the colony project, he said, and by a recent CBC interview in which Chudd said the Hutterite colony will put Gimli on the hook for millions of dollars.
Gimli council also released a public communique dated April 17, a few days before the CEC hearings, in which they claimed they had not been “brought into key discussions at a time when it could have shaped the proposal.”
The RM of Gimli treats the wastewater of RM of Armstrong residents (in a certain catchment area) after an agreement was struck between the two municipalities in 2022 for use of the Gimli WWTP. That wastewater is trucked to the Gimli plant.
When asked what the difference is between the wastewater generated by Armstrong residents, which Gimli’s plant treats, and that which will be generated by colony residents, Wasylowski said: “Gimli’s opposed to it. They don’t want to see this development go forward.”
Given the delays, Wasylowski said the opportunity to look at using the Gimli WWTP to treat the colony’s wastewater may have passed.
That’s despite several residents and the environmental organization Save Lake Winnipeg Project specifically asking during their public presentations to the CEC panel last week that the Gimli WWTP be used to treat colony wastewater rather than allow the proposed lagoon to go forward
It’s unknown whether the province and the federal government would have considered helping with funding for running a pipeline from the colony to the Gimli WWTP, but that was a topic Wasylowski said he wanted to explore.
And as a precautionary step and to “be up front” about it, Wasylowski said Armstrong had asked Gimli if it would consider accepting “trucked” wastewater from the colony to the Gimli WWTP “should we need to use it.”
“As of today [April 23] we have never heard back from Gimli,” said the reeve.
As for the Gimli mayor’s recent statement to CBC that the RM of Armstrong should pay for Gimli roads to the colony, Wasylowski said the colony is a “major landowner [in the RM of Gimli], paying far more taxes to Gimli than to Armstrong.” And Gimli council has use of the colony’s tax dollars to repair its roads.
The Express reached out the RM of Gimli, the mayor and councillors for comment.
“Decisions about wastewater servicing and major agricultural development cannot be reduced to a single infrastructure question or a yes‑or‑no capacity issue. As the mayor outlined in his submission to the Clean Environment Commission … on April 22, water does not respect municipal borders, and neither do the impacts of upstream decisions,” said spokesperson Christine Payne. “Long before modern governance structures, Indigenous Peoples — and later settlers — understood that when water systems are stressed, communities downstream bear the consequences. The RM of Gimli’s position is grounded in that lived reality: responsible development requires collaboration, clarity, shared responsibility and an understanding of cumulative impact before approvals move forward — not after impacts occur.”
When asked if the RM had offered the colony use of the Gimli WWTP and what the response was, Payne said the RM had “participated in discussions with the RM of Armstrong council and Burns Maendel, the proponent’s engineering firm, where the Gimli wastewater treatment plant was explored as a potential servicing option.”
Those discussions had taken place in the “context of broader conversations about capacity, responsibility, and the downstream implications of servicing an industrial-scale operation outside Gimli’s municipal boundaries,” she said.
The response from the colony with regard to the option of using the WWTP was “ultimately declined,” said Payne.
“Questions regarding the specific rationale for that decision are best directed to the RM of Armstrong or the proponent directly, as they are best positioned to speak to their considerations,” she said.
When asked about capacity of the Gimli WWTP — specifically for a maximum of 250 more people (the maximum capacity of the colony’s proposed lagoon) — Payne said questions about infrastructure upgrades, risk, regulatory compliance and so forth would have to first be considered.
“That determination cannot be made in the absence of a detailed technical and operational assessment. Evaluating potential capacity would require close collaboration between the RM of Gimli, its wastewater operators and the proponent’s engineers to understand system impacts, infrastructure upgrades, operational risk, regulatory compliance and long-term implications for ratepayers and downstream systems,” she said. “Until that work is completed, it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions about capacity.”
