Mark Keller, city water and wastewater treatment plants superintendent, right, gives council an update of the work at its Nov. 14 meeting. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Excavation work

City outlines costs for F.E. Holliday water treatment plant improvements

Nov 18, 2022 | 10:00 AM

The City of North Battleford gave an update on the estimated costs for the repair work that was completed for the F.E. Holliday water treatment plant at this week’s council meeting.

The repairs involved undertaking excavation work at the intake system to improve the flow.

City director of operations Stewart Schafer said the project required the digging out of sand in the intake structure that draws water from the North Saskatchewan River, due to a blockage from sediment coming in from the river.

Schafer said, when reviewing the numbers, the total excavation work was estimated at $118,716, not $76,952 as administration previously stated.

The actual project cost came in lower than estimated, at $102,793. However, Environment Canada and the Water Security Agency wanted to see more work done. That brought the cost up by about $21,858 more. As a result, the full total cost came in at around $125,839 plus GST.

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Schafer pointed out the work is something the city needed to do.

“There was no water coming into that intake structure. The intake structure was high and dry,” Schafer said. “In fact, we even had to do a little bit of an emergency [work] afterwards. After the dredging, the river dropped by another two feet, and left the excavation dry again. We had to quickly go in and dredge another little channel out, so we could bring water into [the structure] what we had just excavated.”

He said the plant is currently running properly now, but city administration doesn’t know how much longer it will keep doing that.

“We think when the new spring flood comes in this summer from the mountains, it will probably cover up the excavation again,” Schafer said. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed. But so far, 2022 has not been a good year for us.”

The last time the city completed this work was five years ago.

Schafer said the city could put in another intake structure, but that could cost millions of dollars. So, looking for another solution is not easy.

Mark Keller, city water and wastewater treatment plants superintendent, said it’s hard to know how the spring run-off in 2023 will affect the city’s work already done. He also noted there is a significant sandbar just upstream of the intake, and there is no way to avoid it.

“We might end up having to do this [work] another two or three times, before that sandbar passes by…,” he said. “It’s difficult to predict. Mother Nature has that way about her.”

The city’s director of finance, Brent Nadon, said in the city’s 2023 budget and going forward it will earmark a small amount of money each year to build up a reserve to help cover the cost for this type of maintenance work for the F.E. Holliday plant.

“At least for the foreseeable future, we expect this to happen every few years,” he said.

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow