MELFORT — The City of Melfort is asking residents to stay off the frozen sewage lagoons, north of the little bridge in Melfort.
“What we’ve noticed is because of the snowfall we can see that there has been traffic on these lagoons and we can see foot traffic and we can see snowmobile traffic,” said Brent Lutz, Melfort's director of development, planning and community relations.
“That is a concern to us because we can see the lagoon is quite a different creature than a lake or another body of water.”
Lutz said the city is unsure if residents are unaware of them being sewage lagoons, or if they are just ignorant of the dangers associated with it.
“We do have them signed and we caution people, but if you’ve ever been out on a snowmobile a nice open space with powdery snow is quite the attraction.”
With the lagoons, Lutz said water is constantly moving which creates an unsafe environment where it could give away at any moment— even if it looks thick.
“The way lagoons work is there is a lot of flowing water that comes from cell to cell all the time, and that flowing water of course inhibits the formation of ice.”
As a result, the ice on the lagoon will be thinner than the ice on a pond at similar temperature.
“The same thing if you’re on a body of water where there might be a muskrat house or something like that or a beaver dam,” he said. “Those things are dangerous to go nearby them because they will have thin ice beside them.”
In addition to falling into the ice, Brent said another thing to consider is the lagoons are filled with sewage.
“There is a natural chemical process that occurs in breaking down the sewage. So these chemicals also tend to make the waste… less likely to freeze solid as well,” he said. “In the case of the lagoon there is a number of reasons, no matter what time of the winter, you cannot be confident that the ice on that lagoon is safe to cross.”
Currently, there have been no injuries reported to the city involving people crossing the area.
“We don’t know who has been going across there but we’re not so much concerned about the lagoon, we’re concerned for them.”
