North Battleford lawmakers passed a new bylaw the city could use in case water conservation measures were ever needed in an emergency. (file photo/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

In the chambers

City passes bylaw in case emergency water conservation is ever needed

May 1, 2020 | 5:10 PM

The City of North Battleford has introduced a new bylaw for emergency water conservation in case it is ever required in the future.

“That’s in the event that the city needs to start managing the water supply,” Mayor Ryan Bater said. “This is of course just a measure to have in the event that we do have a disruption in the production of water within the city.”

Council passed the bylaw to implement mandatory water conservation measures targeting non-essential uses if the city decides it is necessary to declare a water emergency in the future. The measures may also be implemented if the province declared a state of emergency where water conservation measures may be necessary.

The bylaw would restrict certain non-essential uses of water to ensure there is enough water to meet basic needs, such as for cooking, cleaning, bathing and toilet flushing, and to maintain sufficient water flows for fire protection. Anyone who violates the bylaw would be subject to a fine ranging from $500 for the first offence to $2,500 for the third and subsequent violation.

The purpose of the bylaw is to ensure residents’ health and safety needs are met during times of an emergency.

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City Manager Randy Patrick said the issue came up when the city was planning its COVID-19 response and decided to split its staff at its water treatment plants so it could keep two independent operations running separately, as a safety precaution.

“The question we immediately had was: What happens if this continues into summer and one of those plants goes down,” he said. “How do we provide water for enough water for the city. One of those ways would be obviously to stop allowing watering of lawns, and potentially car washes, and all sorts of things, to bring [water use] down to levels that are needed for people to live.”

Patrick said while the city didn’t expect that to happen, it wanted to be prepared in case for example one of its water treatment plants flooded and the city needed to declare an emergency related to water use, as an example. The city wanted to have a power it could use to immediately implement an emergency order to reduce water usage and provide water for essential uses only.

“This only comes into place if council says there is an emergency in place or the province in this case does, and that impacts water,” he said. “We would not be doing anything with this currently; that is not the plan. But this allows us for now and into the future to have something ready to go should that be a problem.”

Patrick said the city wants “to make sure we have sufficient supplies for people when we have major issues, and we thought this would be a good approach to doing that.”

Mayor Bater agreed the city “lacked teeth” in its current policy to be able to enforce this measure, so this bylaw was created to be able to provide that impetus.

With this bylaw, the city now has the option to restrict water use for various properties and users when required and has a way to enforce it also.

“We don’t anticipate right now needing to, but it’s a measure we would use just in case,” Bater said.

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow