ECCO Recycling

In 2019, Binnie provided project management and civil design services to support the development of the ECCO Recycling facility with a Site-Specific Stormwater Management Plan, an essential site service required to support the occupancy and operations of ECCO Recycling’s development. Stormwater management ensured that the site development did not cause any adjacent or downstream property owner’s drainage issues.

This project involved designing, reporting, and approving a Storm Water Management Plan for the 1.62 ha Ecco Recycling & Energy Facility in Rocky View County. This design included a zero-discharge storm pond which was included at the request of the client. The zero-discharge pond reduced costs and avoided outlet structure challenges. An outlet structure would have impacted the downstream lands and watercourses, which would require much more extensive analysis and potential mitigations. Zero-discharge has no discharge released off-site through an outlet structure. Instead, there is only evaporation and water re-use for irrigation.

Binnie was part of a team with Badke Consulting Ltd. and used a geotechnical report from Almor Testing Services Ltd. to guide the design. The design included PCSWMM modeling, an advanced modeling software for stormwater, wastewater, watershed, and water distribution systems. It allows for the consideration of a wide range of variables such as rainfall distribution, evaporation, and soil infiltration. Modelling software also allows for the use of longer and more complex numerical calculations that more accurately represent a real-world scenario. Modelling is critical for stormwater retention systems as it allows the user to dynamically represent how a retention system will fill and empty over time with a much larger degree of accuracy than hand calculations.

The pond ultimately included an engineered retaining wall and an emergency spillway. In order to achieve the required storage volume with a minimal footprint on the client’s land, the slopes of the zero-discharge pond were increased to 1.25:1. A retaining wall was required to ensure slope stability. The emergency spillway was required in the event of a storm larger than the design storm. In addition, if no emergency spillway is present, as per the local bylaw requirements, the pond would be required to have the capacity to contain the 1-in-500-year storm event with no spillover. This was not feasible given the land area, and thus, an emergency spillway was included.

Additionally, irrigation was used to aid the zero-discharge design. On-site zero discharge stormwater management facilities are particularly challenging in industrial/business park settings as lot usage needs to be maximized. Irrigation was incorporated into the design to ensure the water balance of the site worked and the footprint of the pond was minimized.