City council won’t know till next year whether the new water treatment plant has exceeded its cost estimate for a fourth and final time.
Asked at last week’s council meeting whether the plant is on budget, Coun. Bill Hanson said it was too early to say.
“We don’t know that yet,” he said, “because you’ve got to remember when you get to the end of a project like this, there’s some things that were supposed to be done and other things that weren’t supposed to be done, and so we’re still trading off ‘this’ for ‘that’ and ‘that’ for ‘this.’”
‘Well within’
Coun. Hanson said the plant is “well within 10 per cent” of its $15.2-million budget – and “that’s huge.”
Indeed within the construction industry, a 10 per cent overrun on a project of this size would not be considered outrageous.
But if the plant does run over budget, it will be the fourth time council provided a cost estimate that turned out to be low.
Council’s first estimate, released in 2008, came in at $6.24 million. In 2009, a revised estimate nearly doubled the tab to $13.2 million.
In 2011, still more overruns put the revised price tag at $15.2 million – and that was after council saved $1 million by scaling back the project.
Coun. Hanson estimated the final expense would not be known until the spring or mid-summer of 2014.
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Though the plant has been operational since August, landscaping work remains to be completed.
Coun. Karen MacKinnon said clean water was a topic of discussion at the recent Association of Manitoba Municipalities convention she attended in Brandon.
One presentation focused on “13 ways to kill your community,” with “don’t have good water” topping the list, she said.
“So we’re number one on the list,” Coun. MacKinnon said. “We have some of the best water in the country now, so we’re doing good.”
Situated near the Aqua Centre by Ross Creek, the plant is officially known as The City of Flin Flon Water Treatment Plant.
Feeder lines from Cliff Lake, the source of Flin Flon’s drinking water, enter the building.
Early in its journey, the water is injected with a coagulant that clumps together all of the dirt and organics that the incoming H20 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.
Dislodges
Forcing the water through those tubes dislodges the clumped-together waste. This muck is then regularly excreted into a concrete basin below.
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 will remove a high volume of those organics, less chlorine will be needed than is presently 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 combines with organics.
The plant also overtakes the functions once performed by the city’s now-defunct No. 2 Heating Plant, which is due to be demolished.
