By Angela Brown

New reservoir and pumphouse in West Park open

Dec 13, 2018 | 10:29 AM

The Town of Battleford had an open house to show off its brand new pumphouse and reservoir in West Park Thursday.

A number of Battleford councillors as well as the project contractors and the town’s operations experts were on hand to greet guests during the event.

Located off Highway 40, the $1.8 million facility will serve to increase water pressure for households and also act as a safety precaution in the event of a major fire.

Battleford town Utility Department Manager Aubrey Whittleton said the project was a priority, and had been many years in the works.

“Basically, West Park now has storage,” he said. “The big thing here is constant pressure to all of the residents in the subdivision, and fire suppression.”

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Whittleton said one of the main reasons the town wanted to build the facility was to have enough water flow for the subdivision to extinguish fires.

Previously, the West Park subdivision residents used water piped in from the town, but the water pressure wasn’t adequate.

“There was pressure but in a big fire scenario we would have had difficulty,” Whittleton said.

He added residents should also see more constant water pressure at home.

The site includes two underground water reservoir chambers. The storage facility holds about 190 cubic metres of treated water in total, which equals about 25,000 gallons of water on each of the two sides.

It took a little over a year to build the project.

“It’s fairly modern,” Whittleton said. “We have modern automation in it. Everything that is run here we can monitor at the water treatment plant as well.”

He added there is also an emergency back-up power system for the facility.

The facility contains two water distribution pumps and a larger third pump that will act as a back-up in case of fire or a higher demand.

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsNOW