Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant

The Ashbridges Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant is the city of Toronto's main sewage treatment facility, and the second largest such plant in Canada after Montreal's Jean-R. Marcotte facility. One of four plants that service the city of Toronto, it treats the wastewater produced by some 1.4 million of the city's residents and has a rated capacity of 818,000 cubic metres per day. Until 1999 it was officially known as the Main Treatment Plant. The plant has a 185 m high smokestack which is visible from most parts of the city.

The plant opened in 1910. Prior to this, Toronto's sewage flowed directly into Lake Ontario and a layer of thick sludge covered the lake to a distance of several hundred feet from shore. The lake was also the source of the city's drinking water and the pollution contributed to a major typhoid outbreak.