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The City of Lloydminster held a special session of council to deal with a land purchase and water treatment retrofit project costs.
The meeting took place on Thursday morning in order to meet a 60-day window to decide on a contract bid for an upgrade to the plant's Powder Activated Carbon (PAC) chemical feeder system.
"It has come in over budget said," Councillor Jason Whiting.
"After they dove into the project, they found other things needed to be replaced, some of the electrical and explosion-proof elements."
He says even the design is a bit challenging.
"It's in a small room, so a lot of things equated to a higher cost than anticipated," Whiting said.
Council approved a $624,000 increase in the budget to be funded by the Alberta Municipalities Water/Wastewater Partnership grant.
The PAC contract for $785,687 has been awarded to technology vendor Filtrum Inc. from Quebec City from the city's 2022 capital budget.
"We want to make sure this got approved today so this project can continue and we can ensure we have safe drinking water," explained Whiting.
"We wanted to make sure it was done with appropriate timing and nothing was held up."
Lloydminster Mayor Gerald Aalbers says Filtrum was the only company to submit a bid, but four contractors were contacted to bid, noting this is very specific technical work.
"Not every contractor would want to work on this project. This is a major retrofit at the water treatment plant as part of the Powder Activated Carbon project," Aalbers said.
The mayor noted the PAC project will take a couple of months to get done.
"We're shooting for the goal to get done before the end of April when we start to see the turbidity and the water quality change in the North Saskatchewan River with the spring runoff."
Aalbers says some of the extra costs of the project to date range from paint to needed explosion proofing and a fire-suppression system.
"The PAC is very fine and if it ignites, we'd literally have an explosion at the water treatment plant," said Aalbers.
"We do want to ensure the safety and get the reliability of the water treatment system."
Aalbers says the work is essential, noting the City of Lloydminster has great drinking water and supplies water to municipalities on both sides of the provincial border.
"We have a responsibility, not just to our residents, but to those other people to ensure the quality of drinking water," he said.
Council also approved a contract increase of $75,214 to ISL Engineering and Land Service Ltd. in Edmonton as the project progresses and overall costs rise.
"We heard as an example from the technology provider, a 12 per cent increase in the dosing unit, 35 per cent for paint and 25 per cent for a lot of factors," said Aalbers.
"It doesn't take long to be over budget from the original budget."
Council also decided to move ahead and complete a $25,900 purchase offer of a city-own laneway by Musgrave Developments Ltd. to consolidate land it owns at 12 Street and 50 Ave. for commercial development.
There was no mention of what type of commercial business Musgrave has in mind for the site that borders 49 Ave. on the east.
The laneway purchase covers .82 hectares and follows a bylaw passed last September to close part of the lane.
Aalbers says Musgrave acquired the property, divided by the laneway from Bea Fisher that sat vacant for a few years.
"It's always terrific to see development in our city and future development along the highway corridor is very important as well, so I'm looking forward to that development," he said.
"This is about the third or fourth time I am aware we've closed a laneway where it's been beneficial to development in the city."
The money from the purchase goes into the city's reserve funds.
