By Greg Higgins

North Battleford hires dredging company to unclog water intake station

Jun 28, 2016 | 12:21 PM

A sandbar has clogged a water intake station and if it isn’t removed North Battleford could see a water shortage.

“We are concerned because neither plant can handle the total city’s water needs on its own. Especially during a warm year like we are having. We were hoping the spring runoff would push the sandbar further into the river but we weren’t so lucky this year,” Stewart Schafer, director of operations, said.

North Battleford uses roughly two million cubic meters of water a year or the equivalent of 800 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Schafer said half the amount comes from the groundwater treatment plant with the second half sourced from the F.E. Holiday Plant currently clogged with sand.

The city recently hired a company to dredge a section of the North Saskatchewan River and unclog the water intake station. The project will cost $124,104 and will begin within the next four days. The work is estimated to take two weeks.

However dredging the river isn’t a long term solution according to Schafer who said if the river floods, it could create another sandbar and clog the intake again.

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“We can put in a second intake but that would be expensive,” Schafer said. “We would also have to be very careful because we have endangered fish in North Saskatchewan. The Lake sturgeon is native here and fisheries wants to protect that fish very carefully.”

Beyond cost, Schafer is concerned about where to place a second intake station. He said because of the presence of sand throughout the river, a new station could plug just as easily.

Schafer added Saskatoon had a similar problem and it cost the city millions to install a new intake station.

Previous methods to try and remove the sand included hiring a diving company last spring to dig a hole around the intake. Sandbags were placed around the intake in an effort to fix the problem hoping the sandbar would subside, yet a month later it was plugged again.

Greg Higgins is battlefordsNOW’s city municipal affairs and health reporter. He can be reached at ghiggins@jpbg.ca or tweet him @realgreghiggins. Concerns regarding this story can be addressed to News Director Geoff Smith at 306-446-6397.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was corrected at 3:25 p.m. June 28, 2016. The F.E Holiday Plant is clogged with sand, not the groundwater treatment plant as an earlier version stated.