By Andrew de Souza

City won’t shut down water plant

Jun 15, 2012 | 12:08 PM

The city won’t be shutting down its water treatment plant despite the highest water turbidity on record, believing the plant is capable of dealing with it.

City Manager Robert Cotterill said the city had been testing water samples from upriver and the newly installed filtration systems in combination with chemical treatment are well able to deal with the record water cloudiness.

“We’ve tested it and tried different chemical combinations and we feel that the plant should be able to handle the water coming from North Battleford,” he said.

Currently water on the river has an NTU rating of about 150 and it’s expected to spike to as high as 5000 thanks to ongoing winter run off coupled with heavy rains upriver in Albert. Normally, the river is around 30.

Cotterill said the city is able to keep the plant running because of the newest systems that were installed as part of the ongoing $24-million upgrades going on.

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“The equipment that we have now is making it so that we can now treat something as severe as 5000 (NTUs) whereas North Battleford doesn’t have that equipment and that’s why they had to shut down,” he said.

Cotterill said while the system is making its way past the city, it’s expected to have a stronger odour but a few days after it passes it should be flushed out of the system.

He said there’s no way to determine how long it’ll take to pass the city since the river system is dynamic due to the numerous systems feeding into the North Saskatchewan after it passes North Battleford.

“You never know what happens between North Battleford and here and what else is coming through the system,” he said. “But we do know is that there’s a lot of junk and debris coming through the river right now.”

adesouza@panow.com
@drewdesouza