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. Phase 1 will handle the hookup inside the water treatment plant for the pipeline that will carry the water from Rafferty Dam, and the construction of 6.2 kilometres of pipeline.
Water division manager Shane Bucsis said it was the amount of pipeline the city felt they’d be able to lay within the approved environmental assessment timeline for this winter season.
Phase 2 will be the construction of the structure for the pumphouse and the 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, and the city would have had to cover the cost of the additional $7 million to get the project complete.
“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 phases is expected to help, 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 provincial and federal government’s are each covering a third of the cost of the water intake project. The city has to complete the project by 2021.
This week’s edition of the Mercury will have more on this story.
