Town crews rebuild water treatment stack, asbestos tests clear

By Ian MacKay

Town staff have rebuilt a stack at the water treatment plant that needed it.

Plant manager Allan Hettrick wanted the work done, so Public Works Department workers proceeded without contacting a supplier who wanted to have representatives observe, indicated superintendent Bob Bors during the Feb. 2 council meeting.

Over about four days, four people took it apart and reassembled it, Bors said. In between, components were cleaned, dried and reconnected with silicone in the right order, he indicated.

“There are 1,200 pairs in there, so 2,400 little membranes plus spacers, and if one of those is flipped out of rotation, it blends wastewater with treated water,” he said. “Everything that comes off goes into an acid solution to clean up while we’re doing the rest of the work.”

Also, staff took part in a Saskatchewan Water Agency asbestos survey and learned that none of the potentially cancer-causing mineral asbestos has leached into drinking water from the asbestos-cement pipes that carry it to the town and through parts of the community.

“There’s nothing,” Bors said during the meeting.

The town hasn’t had the lines inspected since officials were negotiating to join the Elrose-Kyle regional pipeline in the late 2000s, he said.

Water samples were taken from pipelines to the treatment plant from the wells in Eagle Creek and from some of the local taps served by asbestos-cement pipes, he said.

All of the samples “from WSA-regulated drinking water distribution systems with asbestos-cement pipe had no detectable asbestos in drinking water under normal operating conditions,” an agency letter said.

The town has mechanical ways to learn if all the water pumped from the wells to the treatment plant and into town reaches its proper destination, Bors told recently elected councillor John Kadler.

If a leak occurs, staff can find it fairly easily and clamp a band around the pipe as long as it hasn’t moved much, Bors said.

After digging down to leak locations, “You don’t even cut open the pipe, you wrap a stainless steel band around” the pipe and tighten the band, he said.

“One thing about our heavy clay is the leaks always surface,” Bors added.