Regional waterline expected to finish in September

The regional waterline bringing Cold Lake water to Bonnyville residents is close to completion.

The timeline to finish is now mid-to-late September, a delay of a month from the original schedule.

Brian McEvoy, vice-chair, Bonnyville Regional Water Services Commission said there are a couple of areas along the waterline that is causing the disruption.

“Currently, we’re waiting for two components of the waterline to be completed and pressure tested. The bore that was done under the Beaver River, the plan is to start testing that and doing the pressure testing about the 30th of August,” said McEvoy.

“We’ve had to wait because the water level has been so high into Beaver River. One of the vaults that we have to access to do the pressure test has been submerged. The water level has dropped now to the point where we can do that test all the rest of the line, other than Muriel Creek.”

A bore under Muriel Creek is needing another pressure test after being the only portion of the waterline to fail in the initial run through.

Mayor Gene Sobolewski said on The Morning After that the remedy involves pushing another pipe through and waiting for a 14 day notification period to pass.

“The contractor has to mobilize back and start to drill and do the requisite notices and things like that. So we’re probably looking at about mid-September, something like that is what we’re shooting for…and hopefully, we don’t have any more setbacks,” he said.

Once those hurdles have been jumped through and the changeover is ready, residents will be notified.

“We’re going from chlorinated water to chloraminated water. So those that are on dialysis, those that have really expensive fish tanks and things like that, there is going to be a little bit of work that needs to be done because the water is no longer chlorinated, it’s chloraminated, in other words, it has a little bit of ammonia in it.

“And so those folks need to be notified and that the entire town has to be flushed, you don’t want to mix the two waters.”