The City of Lloydminster has closed its recent chapter on the Wastewater Treatment Facility.
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The facility opened in 2023 after two years of construction, prior to a Dec. 1, 2023 deadline.
“This project was required to ensure the City remained compliant and committed to comply with the directive issued from Environment and Climate Change Canada, which posed a deadline of Dec. 1, 2023,” said Terry Burton, director of planning and engineering, City of Lloydminster. “The facility continues to operate as designed and is meeting and exceeding current regulatory requirement.”
Lloydminster Mayor Gerald Aalbers pointed out they were grappling with an even earlier deadline.
“I can tell you, there was actually a deadline of Dec. 1, 2020, until we got the extension to get the project finished,” he explained. “We hadn’t even found the funds, yet. I appreciate the work that’s been put on by the city, fellow council members.”
The project for the city came in under budget, leading to some savings for the municipality.
“While the facility was substantially complete as of Nov. 13, 2023, meeting Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Directive deadline, the warranty period and the remaining deficiency items carried the finalization of costs into 2025,” said Burton. “In the end, the project came in at $80,296,559. This represents a budget savings of $1,203,441 of the allocated $81,500,000 budget.”
Don Stang, executive manager of operations, explained the savings came through their borrowing bylaw.
“All the calculations are done and this is the remaining balance that we did not need to pull out of our borrowing bylaw,” he said.
Aalbers says the facility is a key part of the community, also reminding industry it is not designed to process heavy oil.
“I want to remind people that facility will (serve) our city for a long, long time,” he said. “But I remind our industry, especially heavy oil, that our facility is not designed to process heavy oil. I’ll say it again, please keep your heavy oil out of the way stream.
“If it ends up there, it’s going to be a very expensive proposition for either the city or those that we find out where the oil came from.”
Construction of the facility was funded by the governments of Canada, Alberta and Saskatchewan, along with substantial funding from the City of Lloydminster.
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