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City finds capital savings in sewer main project

There has been an important alteration to the City of North Battleford’s $13.6-million sewer main project currently in the design phase.
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There has been an important alteration to the City of North Battleford’s $13.6-million sewer main project currently in the design phase.

On Monday, council decided in favour of going with a full force main wastewater line, instead of a partial-force main/partial gravity hybrid main.

”The advice from our engineers was to go in that direction,” said Mayor Ryan Bater to the News-Optimist.

Bater said going this direction meant “a significant cost savings, and it also allows for greater flexibility down the road. So council approved that course of action, and then we’ll be [in] discussion with our other partners, with the governments of Saskatchewan and Canada.”

The decision came following a presentation from Ryan King, detail designing engineering lead for AECOM, and Sean Bayer of KGS Group. KGS Group are project managers and this was their latest update on the status of the design. It was the recommendation of the project managers to go with the full force main. King explained the project is not changing fundamentally, as sewer was still going from point A to point B and there was still going to be a pumping station. What this option allows is flexibility in the route that takes the wastewater to the wastewater treatment plant.

The benefit of the force main, King said, is “it gives us flexibility in where we route that and it also gives us flexibility in that we don’t have to be near as deep in the ground.”

With a force main, they could go 10 feet deep in the ground, but with a gravity main they would have to go about 20-30 feet deep which adds to the cost.

The primary reason for going with the force main is capital costs. King said they will save a minimum $400,000 in capital costs, but he indicated the savings could be even greater — upwards of $1 million.

The existing main system will also stay in place. That is a gravity main going from the Allen Sapp Gallery area across the city to the wastewater plant.

Because the new main will be a pressurized system, said Bater, they can still tie into the existing system for the southeast portion of the city. This will “allow for continued growth in those areas,” Bater said.

What’s next for the project is continuation of the design phase this year. The next steps, Bater said, is to get approvals from the provincial and federal governments. That is not expected to be an issue as they were awaiting council’s approval on Monday to go ahead. The entire project is a cost-share between the federal, provincial and municipal levels of government.