By Andrew de Souza

Lift stations need $5M over 3 years

Nov 14, 2012 | 11:22 AM

The city needs to spend as much as $5 million over the next three years to repair aging waste water lift stations, which came perilously close to failure during the power-black-out earlier this year.

On Tuesday evening, city council approved spending just over $538,000 to contract out the planning phase to upgrade the lift station system.

The decision was made after a report was brought to the newly sworn-in city council.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE REPORT FROM CITY ADMINISTRATION

Written by Wes Hicks, the report showed many of the city’s lift stations were woefully out of date, in some cases dangerous for workers and unable to cope with extreme conditions, as the city had experienced during the black out.

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He pointed out that only one lift station remained operational and two others were partly operational.

“It is also important to note that due to the extremely old age of many of the pumping stations (only one) meets all national building, mechanical, electrical and fire codes and OH&S regulations of Saskatchewan,” he wrote in the report.

“None of the rest have proper confined space ventilation. None of the rest have backup power generators. During the Black Out of June 2012, the City came perilously close to having sewage spill into the natural environment…”

Hicks said it was estimated the city would need to upgrade 12 lift stations each year at a cost of $1.5 million per year for an estimated total of $4.5 million plus the cost of planning.

The decision wasn’t an easy one. Councillors didn’t like the fact administration was calling to fund the planning contract out of future budgets.

Coun. Don Cody said the project was obviously needed but council needed to be spending money prudently.

“We know that we need the upgrades, some of these upgrades are very necessary—we know because of the storm,” he said.

“But at the same time I think we need to be far more diligent with regards to funds from other parties because we the city cannot afford to take all of this in.”

Cody said he would prefer if the city waited for provincial and federal funding commitments before moving ahead. Coun. Lee Atkinson agreed, adding that maybe the city didn’t necessarily have to look at all 12 lift stations at once.

City director of Public Works Collin Inness clarified that at this point the city was just looking to contract out the planning of the upgrades and council would be able to decide at a future date when and how to go about actually upgrading the system.

“I can certainly understand that council may not want to earmark funding for that because there are still some unknowns with what we are going to get from the province and federal government,” he said. “But I do think that looking at all the lift stations together will help us in setting our priorities and seeing what needs to happen at each of those stations.”

Coun. Mark Tweidt said it was the right move for the city to at least have planning done in order to be ready should the province announce funding for shovel-ready projects.

“I’d like to see budget allocation. I think we have to have planning in order. Yeah maybe we can’t afford it right away but at least if we can plan for it then when these costs come at least when we can say this is what we want to do,” he said.

After some debate about where the city should find the funding for the planning, council eventually decided to move forward with the planning contract and deal with the funding during upcoming budget deliberations.

With council’s decision an engineering firm will put together a tentative work plan to upgrade the system for council’s consideration.

adesouza@panow.com

On Twitter: @drewdesouza