Money will soon be pumped down the pipe from Ottawa to give several rural Saskatchewan communities a more reliable, sustainable supply of quality water.
Up to $27.3 million will be set aside to potentially flow to nearly 30 communities and rural municipalities, announced Ralph Goodale, federal minister of finance, and Peter Prebble, provincial minister responsible for SaskWater.
This will be provided through the Canada Strategic Infrastructure Fund whose $4 billion supports infrastructure projects of local and regional significance.
“Investing in reliable, high quality water systems is key to the health and economic vitality of rural communities,” Goodale said in a News release
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“Not only will this contribution increase the financial viability of future water supply projects, but the regional approach will lead to a much longer solution for local water needs,” said Prebble in the same release.
The areas identified as sites for potential projects were chosen based on a proven interest through preliminary research in those communities, said Joanne Mysak, manager of consultations, marketing and communications with Western Economic Diversification Canada.
The new funding could represent a maximum of 50 percent of the total cost of each regional water pipeline project and will be disbursed after more detailed consultations among various government officials and representatives from the affected communities. Decisions about which projects will go ahead will be made in October, after the communities submit their business plans, Mysak said.
Five Saskatchewan regions are developing plans now: Caronport, La Ronge, Water West (Rosetown-Elrose), Saskatchewan Landing and Regina East.
“We’re definitely pleased with the initiative that the federal government has taken to come up with this money, because without government assistance on a project like this, I don’t know if all the municipalities together could handle the huge amount of funding needed,” said Erhard Poggemiller, mayor of Kerrobert and chair of the Water West Regional Pipeline Co-operative.
Water West’s proposed project would see a new water pipeline stretch from the South Saskatchewan River south of Eston northwest through Kindersley and Kerrobert to Denzil, serving many smaller communities in between. That’s more than 60 kilometres of mainline pipe plus feeder and lateral lines.
Many of the communities in Water West’s area don’t know yet if they’ll get on the line until the provincial water system assessments are completed by the end of this year. These assessments will let the communities know what they must do to bring their water systems up to the 2008 provincial environmental standards, Poggemiller said.
But it could take a lot of money to upgrade many of the water systems in the small towns and villages.
Therefore, the co-op plans to get water treated at a central location and pumped out to the various communities, eliminating the need for them to upgrade.
“It’s been great to be short-listed to one of five projects in the province,” said Stacey Sauer, project facilitator of the Saskatchewan Landing Water Pipeline Steering Committee, which has been researching its water supply options in the area since 2002.
“This has been a boost, for sure.”
The Saskatchewan Landing group is looking at two systems in the area.
One project would use water from the Kyle aquifer to supply water to the town of Kyle and the rural municipalities of Lacadena and Monet. The other would be for a combined regional water system for Rosetown and Elrose.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent in the last few years by these regional committees doing feasibility studies and preliminary planning, engineering, design and layout work.
“We were hoping that the federal government would come on board. They obviously took notice of the work we have been doing,” said Poggemiller.
Sauer added: “Our next step is to prepare our best case scenario, what our best business plan is here for our regional water system and present that to the federal government for their consideration.”
This co-operative approach to building infrastructure between various levels of government seems to work well for all involved.
“We’ve realized as communities (that) we’d better get together and start working as a region if we want to tap into any of this federal money to make these things work. The only way we’re going to be competitive with other communities is if we group together as a unit,” said Poggemiller.
Reasons for the projects are three-fold: to have a large enough water source to attract industry into the communities; to meet environmental water quality standards that are becoming more stringent and to ensure a supply of quality water to rural areas.
“There’s a lot of industry that this town has foregone in the past because of water quantity and so on. Hopefully that will be alleviated,” Poggemiller said.
There has been interest over the years in west-central Saskatchewan in developing greenhouses, a feedlot, slaughter plant and a mustard plant. They never got off the ground because there was no water source large enough to supply them. A lack of quality water also forced a pilot ethanol plant in the area to shut its doors a number of years ago.
Residents and tourists alike have noted with displeasure Kerrobert’s brown water for years, Poggemiller said.
Its four wells are being pumped to their maximum, resulting in water rationing throughout most of the summer, and it is expensive to remove the brown colour from the water.
Being part of the new treated water pipeline would turn his town’s water woes around, enabling spending to be allocated to upgrading other water infrastructure in the town, such as the clay cast lines that have been underground for 60 years.
While there is no guarantee that all five short-listed projects will get the go-ahead, or if they do, how many dollars each project will receive, Poggemiller is confident the ongoing consultations between the various levels of government will prove favourable.
“As far as we’re concerned, we’ve got the green light to go ahead and develop what we wanted to develop.”
The good thing about this money is that it doesn’t disqualify the regions from receiving any additional or future infrastructure funding, Poggemiller said, adding that this government funding is money that is needed and will be well spent.
