Water treatment plant nearing end of its life

By Ian MacKay

Rosetown's water treatment plant has about eight to 10 more years of life before the town needs a major upgrade or replacement.

Town council, during a May 4 regular meeting, approved hiring Aecom to study the setup and recommend how to upgrade or replace it. The assessment and report will cost almost $49,000 and are required to win a grant from other governments, the Aecom document notes. Preparing grant applications will cost extra.

Engineers with Aecom, the town's engineering contractor, learned details about Rosetown's raw well water and how local staff treat it during a meeting here in August. Led by Nellie Smith, who has worked with Aecom for 18 years and has experience assessing the Rosetown operation, a team is to find the best alternative, whether upgrading the existing plant or replacing it, and provide "capital and life cycle cost estimates," the document says.

"Upgrade options will be recommended such that they address concerns with capacity and redundancy as well as achieving a treated water quality that meets all provincial water-quality standards while being economical for the town to operate," the proposal says.

Workers at the treatment plant must first filter out iron and manganese using a chemical process, then operate an electrodialysis-reversal (EDR) "package plant" to reduce the level of dissolved salts before pumping the treated water into town, the document says.

The system cannot keep up "during periods of higher demand," is the only one of its kind in the region, and its electrical components rust "due to the presence of chemical vapours in the air." Staff cannot treat water during power outages, so they would like to use a generator.

However, the plant does not have "the equipment installed to bring in a portable generator," the document says.

The town's drinking water meets national and provincial quality standards except for total dissolved solids, which contribute to bad taste and scaling of pipes throughout the civic and residential systems, the document adds.