The town of Altona should be able to meet provincial regulations on nutrient management once its sewage lagoon upgrade is completed.

The three phase project has involved the construction of a new storage cell which was completed last year and a new aeration cell that was finished in October.

The only work that remains is the installation of a new treatment plant equipped which is phase three. The plant will contain a filtration system that directly removes phosphorus from waste water, keeping it out of local water ways when it's released.

Dan Gagne admits the new filtration equipment is costly, but it has a number of advantages.

"We currently us precipitate chemicals that latch onto the phosphorus forcing it to settle in the storage cells. Now, instead of that process, we would use a mechanical filtering treatment plant to remove the phosphorus, which will ultimately extend the life of the storage cells a lot longer because there's no settling happening."

The town is normally allowed to discharge treated waste water between the months of June and October. The new filtration system, once up and running, will extend that period by about a month or even more in both spring and fall, according to Gagne.

"It allows us to use our storage capacity more effectively. That's important for the town, because we have used up all of the land that we currently own at that location. This upgrade will now expand the life of the whole facility from 20 years to about 40 years, almost doubling the capacity of the land we have."

Phase three of the $10-million expansion project will start in 2017.