Sewage treatment
Sewage treatment plants were proposed for both Halifax and Dartmouth beginning in the 1970s, however, the separate municipalities were never able to reach a consensus for system design and construction. That decade saw the Halifax Regional Water Commission begin to charge its customers a pollution surcharge which was intended to fund such a system. Meanwhile, a host of different provincial and federal governments came and went and overall funding was never finalized. It was only following municipal amalgamation which saw the cities of Halifax and Dartmouth dissolved and merged with all municipalities in Halifax County to form the Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996 that the sewage treatment issue gained necessary traction and moved beyond the planning stage.