The City of Flin Flon could have built a less expensive water treatment plant, but taxpayers would have lost out in the long run, says Mayor George Fontaine.
With the plant set to bring about a major utility rate hike, some residents are questioning whether the multimillion-dollar facility is needlessly extravagant.
Operational for nearly a year, the plant has as its chief purpose the purification of outgoing tap water to ensure provincial health standards are met.
Less known is the fact that the plant also met the city’s closely related needs for a new water pumping and heating system as well as increased water storage.
Fontaine says the city did look at each upgrade separately and concluded that combining them into a single project was by far the most economical manoeuvre.
The $15.2 million budgeted for the plant, he says, was “paltry” compared to the alternative.
“We look at the long-term implications of doing and not doing a whole lot of things,” says Fontaine.
“We were at one point told by the government, ‘You can scale this project back.’ We said, ‘No, if we’re going to scale the project back, we’re not doing it at all.’ Because what’s the point? Then all of a sudden we’re stuck with a system that still needs work.”
Pumps shot
Fontaine says the city’s old water pumps were “completely shot” and workers weren’t sure how to continue relying on them year to year.
And so components of the now-demolished No. 2 Heating Plant – a facility that Fontaine says was “held together by thumbscrews and band-aids” – were included in the treatment plant.
The plant further allows for increased water storage, useful in the event of a major fire that consumes a lot of water or should the plant experience a malfunction.
The biggest drawback of the 12,900 sq.-ft. plant may be the drastic utility bill increase anticipated as a result.
City council has applied to boost utility rates by 30 per cent this year. For residents without water meters – the majority of the population – this would mean an extra $258 a year.
Fontaine says the city has only so much control over utility costs.
“You’re mandated to [build] these big projects, you [build] them, they come with an upfront cost and then they come with an operating cost,” he says. “So any city that’s had to comply with those sorts of things is running into exactly the same situation. Like, I hate to say it, but we’re not special. This is pretty universal, what’s going on right now with all of the demands that have been put on us by the new regulations.”
Continuing to supply Flin Flonners with water that was below standard, Fontaine says, was not an option.
“I’d rather be responsible for taxpayers having to pay a few more dollars than be responsible for having taxpayers who are ill or so on because we didn’t do the things that we were mandated to do,” he says.
Treat me right
Water is going through an elaborate treatment process before it reaches your tap.
Since August of 2013, Flin Flonners have been consuming H20 purified by the $15.2-million treatment plant situated near the Aqua Centre.
Early in its journey into the plant, water from
Cliff Lake is injected with a coagulant that clumps together all of the dirt and organics that the incoming water brings with it.
The water makes its way through a pair of towering plastic tanks before proceeding to a series of 108 pipe-shaped filter units. Inside each unit is a bundle of tiny, spaghetti-like tubes.
Forcing the water through those tubes dislodges the clumped-together waste. This muck is excreted into a concrete basin below.
Off in one corner of the plant is a row of what looks like six overgrown fire hydrants. They are the pumps that thrust the water to Flin Flon homes.
As advanced as the treatment plant is, it still relies on the addition of a chemical used to disinfect Flin Flon’s water for decades – chlorine.
Chlorine reliably kills organics in the water. But since this sprawling plant removes a high volume of those organics, less chlorine will be needed than was previously the case.
That, in turn, should mean far fewer trihalomethanes making it to your tap.
THMs, as they are known, are health-damaging chemical compounds produced when chlorine mixes with organics.
