The City of Estevan is going to proceed with the water intake project that will shift the city’s primary water source from Boundary Dam to Rafferty Dam.
Estevan city council awarded the tender for Phase 1 of the intake project to GCS Energy for $2,768,083 during Monday night’s meeting. Shane Bucsis, the manager of the water treatment plant and wastewater treatment plant, said the intake project is going to be completed in three phases.
Phase 1 will be for the hookup inside the water treatment plant for the pipeline that will carry the water from Rafferty Dam, along with the construction of 6.2 kilometres of pipeline.
The 6.2 kilometres of pipeline marks the most work the city felt they’d be able to complete within the approved environmental assessment timeline for this winter season.
Phase 2 will be the construction of the structure for the pump house and the raw water intake, and Phase 3 will be completion of the pipeline to the new intake structure.
The city decided to break the project up into three phases after the tenders for the project came in significantly over budget last year. The city would have had to cover the cost of the additional $7 million to get the project complete, since the money from the provincial and federal governments would not cover the budget overages.
“We went back, and with the engineers, we took a look at the project to see how we could make it cheaper,” said Bucsis.
Breaking it up into three different phases is expected to make a big difference, he said, because it will allow additional companies to bid on the work. And reducing the size of the pipe from 600 millimetres to 500 millimetres is also expected to reduce costs.
The price last year was $255 per metre for the pipe, but now it will be $242 per metre.
Reducing the pipe size is not expected to affect water supply, either.
“For flow wise, in the long-term, the pipeline at 600 millimetres would have been the long-term for 40 years,” said Bucsis. “By dropping it down, we lower the growth curves for 30-35 years.”
Bucsis pointed out that those numbers for the life cycle of the pipe came from 2011, when Estevan was going through a surge in population. Now that the boom is over, the demand for raw water has levelled out, and he anticipates the life expectancy should be 40 years.
Phase 2 and Phase 3 will also be retendered. Councillor Greg Hoffort wanted to know if the next two phases will have cost estimates as well.
“The question is, how do we feel, based on seeing this, that the overall project cost is coming in,” said Hoffort.
The cost for Phase 1 is half of what it was a year ago.
Bucsis believes the overall project cost is now very close to what was budgeted.
Councillor Trevor Knibbs wanted to know what will happen if the final phase of the project comes in well over budget.
“I understand doing the three separate tenders, but what happens if we hit a roadblock? Do we just quit the project, or is the city on the hook for the rest?” asked Knibbs.
If that were to happen, then Bucsis said they would have to look at paying for the additional cost or re-engineering the project.
The provincial and federal governments are each covering a third of the cost of the water intake project. They city has to complete the project in 2021, or the federal and provincial governments would each be owed more than $6 million.
Once the intake project is complete, it is expected to improve the quality of Estevan’s water by reducing the level of trihalomethanes (THMs) and reducing the hardness of the water. The levels of THMs in Estevan’s water supply are currently above the provincially-regulated level.
The city and the provincial and federal governments announced funding in November 2016 for two projects. The first was a residuals management project for the water treatment plant. Tailing ponds were constructed for the residuals, which were previously pumped into the Souris River. That project was completed in the fall of 2017.
The other project was the water intake.
Once the primary water source is shifted to Rafferty Dam, Boundary Dam will still be a back-up water source for the city.
The provincial and federal governments each contributed $3.1 million to the projects, which have a total projected cost of $9.3 million.
