Irricana CAO Alvin Melton updated Town council on their upcoming water treatment plant upgrade during the council meeting on Jan. 4.
The upgrade to the water treatment plant was one of five important projects Irricana listed in their 2012 capital budget in the Aug. 20 council agenda.
It is expected to cost approximately $500,000, and will be paid for through provincial and federal grants.
Melton said that the project is still in the planning stage, but it will be going out to tender in February.
He explained that the project will add pumps to the water treatment plant, which will make it easier to fight fires in Irricana by increasing pressure from the main plant and give the town enough water pressure for up to 2,500 residents. The 2011 Canada census found that there were 1,162 people in Irricana at the time.
“There’s three pumps that the town uses to provide pressure for the community, one of the pumps is strictly for fires and that is a diesel back-up pump.
“The way the pumps are set up now is two electric pumps provide all the pressure and that third diesel back-up is used specifically for fires. When there is a fire and the trucks are pumping thousands of gallons of water per minute, we need more capacity at the pumping station, so that’s where that diesel pump comes in. We have to physically go down there and start that diesel pump up to make sure there’s enough pressure,” said Melton after the council meeting.
“That should be automatic, we shouldn’t have to go down there and physically start an engine to make it run. So this new project will make sure everything is automated and we won’t have to worry about going down there and starting a pump up.”
Deputy Mayor Larry Martin stated during the meeting that he had concerns about what would occur if the city were to grow beyond a population of 2,500, though the most recent federal census showed a population decrease of 6.5 per cent from the 2006 census.
“My concern was that with our pump system that we’re putting in it’s going to take us up to 2,500 for population quite easily and we’re right around 1,000 right now, so it’s a fair bit of growth, but I just wanted to make sure that we could have a module system so that we could add on if we ever grow bigger than that. We may never – who knows? I just wanted to make sure that option was there,” said Martin.
“(Melton) let me know that by increasing the horsepower of the pumps, we can increase the amount of water flow dramatically, and I’m good with that.”
According to Melton, the type of growth Martin was worried about is 20 to 30 years down the road. But if it does, it won’t be a difficult upgrade.
“The infrastructure is in place that if we need to upgrade, the parts are there that it will be a simple upgrade, it won’t be changing any major infrastructure, it will be simply changing out the existing pumps that will be put into place,” said Melton.
Melton added that issues with the water tower, including a leak before Christmas that forced the Town to decrease the water levels in the tower, have increased the urgency around the project.
“That’s one of the major infrastructure projects – it’s the No. 1 priority for council and finally it’s being put into a project that will be completed as soon as possible,” he said.
