waste water plant

The Waste Water treatment plant is asking city council to approve more money for upgrades.

The Water Waste Treatment Plant (WWTP) is in need of more money to go ahead with their Blending Chamber Project.

The new estimated budget is a considerable increase from the original $3.3 million to  $5.7 million and extend the deadline for repayment from 2019 to 2023.

The project is needed to upgrade the chlorine filtration system has reached the end of its life span after being in use for 44 years. The WWTP is hoping to not only fix the chlorine chambers but add a UV disinfecting chamber as an extra step in the treatment process. The estimated price of the project has increased so drastically because the risk factor pricing from the companies was higher than what they projected.

Other issues that are requiring more funding is the complicated construction sequence to build and preform maintenance without disrupting the city’s water flow and the construction constraints and tight scheduling brought on by long winter months,

Mayor Steve Black said that this isn’t the first time council was given a significantly smaller original estimate than what was actually needed to a complete project by a company. He agreed that the blending chamber is important for the city and not something to be cutting costs on.

Black is hoping that money can be found by reaching out to the federal and provincial governments. The provincial government is supposed to provide one third of funding for specific projects, and the federal government has made room in the budget to provide funding for infrastructure, with water and water waste management a priority.