Lloydminster council recently got a detailed look at local water systems.
At the June 9 council meeting, council adopted in principle the 2025 water treatment assessment final report.
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The report provides an understanding of how the city’s infrastructure is performing and anticipates the city’s needs as growth occurs.
“This report speaks to the condition of the water treatment system assets as of today and the capacity of some of the more critical pieces such as the west end reservoir or the clarifier within the water treatment plant,” said James Rogers, senior manager, capital infrastructure.
Details of potential capital-project funding specifics would return to a future budget discussion.
“Those will be detailed out once those projects are approved and administration bring those forward through the capital budgets in 2026 and beyond,” said Don Stang, executive manager of operations.
Capital projects will be partially paid for by Cenovus as they use the water system.
“As per our current raw water agreement with Cenovus, which I believe expires in 2039, we’re working on a renewal for that already,” said Stang. “They would be responsible for a percentage based on how much volume of water they’re using of the pipeline and that’s based on a yearly average.
“They would pay that percentage of any capital work.”
The items assessed in this masterplan include, the river pumphouse and raw water supply pipeline, water treatment plant, Cenovus raw water pumphouse, raw water reservoir and the west-end reservoir.
Key recommendations were made for some of these facilities. The river pumphouse is recommended to have a structural inspection completed of the wet well walls and floors with divers.
For the raw water pipeline, it’s recommended an inspection is completed within the next five years to determine its remaining service life.
“We cannot pull this pipeline offline, not easily anyways,” said Rogers. “We have a limited time we can pull it offline to actually inspect within the pipe using traditional methods. We are seeking industry input on how we can review the internal condition of this pipeline as well as all the vaults to come up with what is the remaining capacity or remaining life cycle of that pipeline.”
Mayor Gerald Aalbers commented on the need for an inspection on the pipeline.
“As city council, I think after the experience Calgary had, I would certainly support administration ensuring we get to it sooner than later if they can, to determine the condition of that raw waterline,” he said.
The clarifier capacity is a limiting factor of how much water the city can produce, which is next to be reviewed.
“This project is already ongoing,” said Rogers. “We have capital budget approved to complete upgrades or rehabilitation within the clarifier, we are just securing the services of a consultant to help us with the final assessment, the design and then tendering to secure a contractor to actually complete the clarifier rehabilitation project.”
It is recommended the water treatment plant undertake trials to operate the clarifier at higher flows.
“Flow projections to determine timing for the water treatment plant upgrade are critical in understanding when actually need to expand the plant or build a new plant to improve our treatment capacity,” said Rogers.
For the west-end reservoir, decommission and demolition of the circular reservoir is being recommended within the next five to 10 years. Though, losing that piece of storage could add complications to the water system.
“As we demolish that because of its condition, we will need to make up its capacity,” Rogers said, noting the current capacity is 4,500 cubic metres.
“If we demolish that, we need to make that up immediately with another 4,500 cubic metre storage reservoir.”
A look at the projected maximum daily demand on the city shows the current clarifier’s capacity of 20,168 cubic metres may not be sufficient.
“We will be above our 20,168 cubic metres per day between five years and 10 years,” said Rogers.
Stang, however, says there’s still more time.
“Although it looks like we’re going to be at capacity in very short time, we believe we have a lot more time,” he said. “The critical piece council needs to take into consideration here is we should be planning for some form of expansion.
“The limiting factor is the capacity of the clarifier.”
Coun. Justin Vance asked if there were any alarming concerns in the findings of this report.
“There was nothing that was overly alarming,” said Rogers. “Jamie and his team at the water treatment plant as well as Karen on the distribution side know exactly where that system is at and operate it extremely well.”
Rogers also outlined some steps going forward.
“Going forward, so the document gets approved in principle, allows us to start putting it into the 10-year capital plan,” he said. “That allows us to start reviewing utility rates to start recouping some of the costs on this. As well as conversations with some of our other partners such as Cenovus and other users along the line.”
Stang said their reserve has some room to take on urgent projects.
“I believe our reserve has a little bit of room for taking on some of the more urgent projects over the next two to four or five years,” he said. “We’re going to have to look at our rates to ensure we get enough funding as we move forward.”
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