The City of Estevan will receive an influx of federal and provincial funding for a pair of water infrastructure projects that will improve water quality and environmental standards.
The announcement was made on Nov. 10 during a press conference at city hall.
The bulk of the funding will be directed towards the construction of a new water intake and pipeline to access Rafferty Dame Reservoir as a water source. Once the project is finished, Rafferty will supplant Boundary Dam as the water source for the city.
Boundary Dam will be a backup water source.
The other project will be the construction of a residuals management facility to treat the wastewater generated by the city’s water treatment plant, using an effective and low-energy process. This will help to protect the local environment, including the Souris River Watershed.
Kevin Sutter, who is the manager of the city’s water and wastewater treatment plants, told the Mercury that local residents will notice the difference once Rafferty becomes Estevan’s main water source.
“Raw water from Rafferty Dam is of much higher quality than Boundary Dam, so our water will be softer, and will have less minerals in it,” said Sutter. “It will be a lot easier to work with washing clothes.”
The process for adding Rafferty as a water source has already started. Sutter predicted it will take a year to complete the project’s design, and then it will take a couple more years to complete construction.
“It will be three years from today that I would expect commissioning to happen with the new water supply,” said Sutter.
An intake structure and a pump station will have to be installed at Rafferty Dam. Then a pipeline will have to be constructed from Rafferty Dam to the water treatment plant.
Boundary Dam will be retained as the backup water source if there is a problem with Rafferty Dam.
“As everybody heard this summer, with North Battleford and Prince Albert, when they lost their water source, it caused a lot of issues,” said Sutter.
“If we ever had something occur to our raw water source to Boundary Dam right now, we would have no secondary intake, so we would lose the ability to treat water and supply the city.”
The residuals management project will mean the solids will be removed from the wastewater, and clean water will be poured into the Souris River. It should be constructed and commissioned next year.
“It’s already been designed,” said Sutter. “We had anticipated this need, and paid for a design on that project already. It’s just been sitting on the shelf, and waiting for some funding.
“So when this funding opportunity came up, we grouped that with the secondary intake project, and made the proposal,” said Sutter.
Sutter has been pushing for these projects for a number of years. When he first started with the city in the 1980s, they had the Souris River as a backup water source, but the quality of the river water was not sufficient. So that was discontinued, and they haven’t had a secondary source since then.
Rafferty has proven to be a very high quality water source, Sutter said, but a pipeline project is expensive, and it would have likely been cost-prohibitive for the city to proceed with the project on their own.
The Rafferty project has an estimated cost of $7 million, and the residuals management facility will cost a little more than $2.3 million.
The money is coming from the federal government’s new Building Canada Plan, which supplies funding for infrastructure projects.
The federal and provincial governments are each contributing up to $3.1 million. The City of Estevan will be responsible for all remaining costs of the projects, which has a total eligible cost of $9.4 million.
Estevan MLA Lori Carr said these joint investments in water projects will make life better for local citizens.
“Two of the most important services a municipality can provide to its residents are a safe and reliable supply of drinking water, and the treatment of waste water using modern methods,” said Carr.
City Councillor Dennis Moore thanked the provincial and federal governments for their commitment.
Regina-Wascana MP Ralph Goodale, who is the only Saskatchewan MP for the federal Liberal government, was unable to attend the press conference, but in a press release, he said this investment in Estevan will protect the local environment and provide access to improved drinking water.
