MOOSE JAW — With Moose Jaw’s stormwater infrastructure crumbling and city hall needing nearly $7 million over five years for repairs, city council has made “a hard decision” to create a new revenue-generating utility.
During a 2025 budget meeting, council voted unanimously to approve the creation of a stormwater utility to generate additional revenue to upgrade the minor and major stormwater systems. Further, council authorized city administration to bring forward a report with possible fees that properties would pay and a bylaw that establishes the stormwater utility.
City hall expects to implement the utility starting Tuesday, July 1.
The city’s stormwater system is valued at $210,730,000 and includes pieces such as 79.8 kilometres of pipes, 1,950 catch basins, 1,025 manholes, 65 outfalls and 77 culverts, a budget report said. Of note, Spring Creek alone requires $20 million worth of upgrades, excluding enhancements to Crescent Park’s Serpentine Creek, which it feeds.
Administration told council that repairs to aboveground and belowground stormwater infrastructure are required because they are in poor condition — many culverts are at risk of collapsing — and lack capacity. The goal is to enable pipes to handle major one-in-five-year storms.
The hard, but right decision
The sewer system is mostly hidden underground, but when it fails, it negatively affects the community, while the stormwater system can also cause sewer backups through excess precipitation, Coun. Chris Warren said.
The stormwater system is “extremely important” and designed to mitigate flooding and drainage issues, while it’s important to protect the health of areas like Spring Creek and the Serpentine, he continued.
He noted that administration had presented several reports during the budget discussions that identified work that was going to cost millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, Warren recalled having discussions on council around 2015 about the cast iron replacement program and pointed out that it took one budget increase to start that snowball rolling, which turned into “a huge snowball.”
“Now we’ve got some dedicated funding sources many years later (for) that critical infrastructure, and now we’re seeing great news stories when it comes to our water breaks and the condition of our water pipes,” he said.
Warren added that creating a stormwater utility was “a hard decision, but the right decision.”
Baby steps
Coun. Jamey Logan was hesitant to add another tax onto property and landowners but thought approving this utility was something council must do. He didn’t think it was appropriate to kick this infrastructure problem into the future, as past councils had done with the Fourth Avenue bridge and Crescent View Lift Station.
“Let’s tackle this now and take baby steps and see where we get,” he said.
Collapsing culverts
Coun. Patrick Boyle said that old pieces of two-by-four wood are literally holding up or holding together stormwater infrastructure pieces across the city — based on pictures council has seen — and is a problem residents should know.
Meanwhile, he, too, recalled the conversations around 2015 about cast iron replacement and pointed out that before that project began, there were about 150 water pipe breaks annually that required almost $3 million in repair costs. Now, though, those breaks are down to about 40 annually.
Boyle added that council can address this problem over time if it starts now, while he didn’t want to wait until that infrastructure — usually out of sight, out of mind — collapsed and flooded people’s homes.
Transparency and accountability
Transparency and accountability were the buzzwords during the 2024 municipal election, so council must be transparent in telling residents that this critical infrastructure needs repairing, said Coun. Heather Eby. Moreover, council is being accountable by telling taxpayers it is creating a utility to pay for this maintenance.
“If we have to start small, it would be better than not starting at all,” she continued, noting that upstream repairs are required before the city can upgrade the Serpentine Creek.
Eby added that city hall should post pictures online showing the crumbling stormwater infrastructure when communicating with the public about this utility.
