By Greg Higgins

Waterline from town to city to remain intact

Nov 29, 2016 | 11:07 AM

The waterline connecting the town of Battleford to the city of North Battleford will remain for a while, according to city council.

The town line was installed to provide the city with more water after the F.E. Holiday surface water treatment plant had to be shut down due to the Husky oil spill in the North Saskatchewan River.

Since the previous filtration system was unable to processing oil from the spill, council approved a new pre-filtration system at the F.E. Holiday plant which should be up and running by Dec. 5.

Following its installation, the line will then be drained and shutoff however, it will remain intact. According to director of operations for the city, Stewart Schafer, the line will be needed again in the spring in order to fill up the reservoir.

“The line supplies 40 per cent of the water currently. Without it we still need a supply of water. The wells are only producing 60 per cent of what we need currently,” he said.

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When operating, the F.E. Holiday plant brings in 100 litres of water a second which would fill an Olympic sized swimming pool roughly every seven hours. The line from Battleford brings in 20 liters per second, the new wells bring in 30 and the new General Electric pre-filtration system will bring in 40 liters per second. According to Schafer, the amount should be good enough to get the city through winter.

Schafer said the flow in the line is keeping it from freezing but the city plans on adding some heat in “strategic areas” to ensure it doesn’t freeze before the new filtration system is good to go. Schafer added there is no concern about a water shortage.

According to Schafer, the new filtration system is designed to filter out any oil from the spill which may come through during the spring run off.

“It’s basically just a sand filter that will pick up the glob before it gets into the water treatment plant,” Schafer said. “In addition, we have further hydro carbon testing monitors to ensure we don’t get something we don’t want in the water.”

Once the globs are filtered out, it will be sent to the proper processing facility, either in Marshall or to Unity for disposal.

Greg Higgins is battlefordsNOW’s city municipal affairs and health reporter. He can be reached at ghiggins@jpbg.ca or tweet him @realgreghiggins.