Fired contractor for North Shore sewage plant project pays $235-million settlement | Daily Hive

Fired contractor for troubled North Shore sewage plant project pays $235-million settlement

2025 construction progress on the new North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant in the industrial waterfront of the District of North Vancouver. (PCL Constructors)

Spanish infrastructure engineering giant Acciona has provided Metro Vancouver Regional District with a $235-million settlement payment in relation to the beleaguered project of building the new North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant.

In a short joint statement by both entities issued early this afternoon, the regional district’s board of directors — comprised of Metro Vancouver mayors and select city councillors — approved the settlement agreement with Acciona, ending years of legal disputes between the parties.

“The Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District and ACCIONA were parties to a Project Agreement to design and construct the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant (the Project). Issues arose during the Project which resulted in both parties filing lawsuits against the other,” reads the statement.

“The parties have mediated and have reached a settlement agreement wherein ACCIONA provided $235 million to the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District. The lawsuits have been resolved.”

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In a separate, standalone statement issued minutes later, the regional district also announced that it will conduct an independent review of the troubled project, now that the legal proceedings have ended.

An independent review was initially launched by the regional district in 2024 but was later paused after officials determined it was in the district’s best interest to allow the legal proceedings to conclude first, as the review could affect the ongoing litigation.

When Acciona began major construction work on the plant in 2018, the project’s cost was pegged at $700 million, with a completion date targeted for 2020.

The budget escalated to $1.058 billion by 2021, and the regional district terminated the contract with Acciona in 2022, accusing the company of abandoning the project, completing sub-standard work, and failing to control the project’s cost and schedule.

After being terminated, Acciona filed a lawsuit seeking $250 million in damages against the regional district, which subsequently filed a $500-million countersuit of its own. Acciona alleged that there were major issues with the small site and ground conditions for such a facility, and that the regional district made numerous major changes to the design mid-construction, including turning this into a tertiary treatment facility, which requires added space for the extra equipment.

But with the settlement paid by Acciona, a dispute now ended outside of the court process, it appears the regional district’s arguments carry much greater weight than the original lead contractor for the project.

north shore wastewater treatment plant construction january 29 2025

January 2025 construction progress on the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant. (Metro Vancouver Regional District)

In March 2024, the regional district first publicly revealed that the project’s cost had escalated to $3.86 billion, with completion now targeted for 2030.

The regional district contracted PCL Constructors and AECOM to finish the project. After performing minor construction work, PCL resumed major construction activities in early 2024.

According to the regional district, 1,500 serious concrete deficiencies were repaired by PCL during the previous early construction work process after Acciona was terminated. PCL also finished the complete pour work; Acciona previously completed half of the project’s 80,000 cubic metres of concrete pours.

Within the concrete shell of the plant, over 900 pieces of water treatment equipment, more than 6,000 instruments and control devices, and 800 km of electrical cabling will be installed.

Upon completion, the existing 1961-built Lions Gate Wastewater Treatment Plant below the north end of the Lions Gate Bridge — a facility that only provides primary treatment or very light treatment — will be decommissioned, with the land rehabilitated and transferred to the Squamish Nation. The new plant will reuse the existing facility’s outfall pipe into Burrard Inlet, with the conveyance connection from the new plant to the new conveyance pump station at the First Narrows already completed.

Acciona is also the lead contractor for other major projects in the region, including the new replacement of the Pattullo Bridge, SkyTrain Millennium Line’s Broadway extension to Arbutus, and SkyTrain Expo Line’s Surrey-Langley extension.

north shore wastewater treatment plan revised design

Artistic rendering of the revised design of North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant. (Metro Vancouver Regional District)

The issues surrounding the sewage treatment plant project have become a political watershed moment for the regional district, triggering extremely intense scrutiny of the regional district’s overall operations, procedures, and finances by mayors and city councillors — particularly those serving on the regional district’s board and committees — amid growing pressure for major reforms and operating and capital cost reductions.

The project’s cost escalation has also put upward pressure on the fees paid by households, businesses, and other ratepayers across Metro Vancouver, especially those on the North Shore, as this new plant directly serves the District of West Vancouver, District of North Vancouver, and the City of North Vancouver. There has been some pushback from the North Shore’s municipal politicians against having their residents and businesses pay the brunt of the project’s greatly inflated budget.

Early this spring, North Vancouver City mayor Linda Buchanan and North Vancouver District mayor Mike Little made a formal request to Premier David Eby for the provincial government to perform a public inquiry into plant project, conduct an arm’s-length governance review of the regional district, and consider a “fairness mechanism” so that no municipality can ever again be held to a cost-sharing formula applied to costs that were never contemplated when the agreement was made.

North Shore communities are responsible for 37 per cent of the project’s cost, but represent about eight per cent of the overall population of the Metro Vancouver region. With the project’s cost overruns, North Shore residents face additional costs of up to $590 — up to $1,182 — by 2028, per household, per year, for 30 years.

The troubles over the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant project also led to greater attention to the regional district’s other major capital projects, especially the new Iona Island Wastewater Treatment Plant project — a facility near Vancouver International Airport that directly provides the sewage treatment needs for Vancouver, the University of British Columbia, the University Endowment Lands, and parts of Burnaby and Richmond.

In October 2025, the regional district announced that the Iona plant’s cost had been cut by almost $4 billion — from nearly $10 billion to about $6 billion. The reduced cost is enabled by repurposing components of the existing plant at the site, and meeting the federal government’s minimum secondary treatment requirements — instead of pursuing tertiary treatment at this time. Construction on the project is underway.

Map showing Metro Vancouver’s four separate sewerage areas (Yellow: North Shore; Orange: Vancouver; Red: Lulu Island West; Green: Fraser). (Metro Vancouver Regional District)

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