Explore an alternate water source
NOTE: The following letter was provided to The Outlook in early summer but had not been published.
Several months ago, I heard that the Town Council was going to be spending several millions of dollars to replace the intake at the river pump house for the town water supply.
Over the years I saw other Council do the same thing, the trouble with the river is the channel changes and the sand bar moves in blocking the intake.
I spoke with one of the councillors and asked him why don’t they have their engineers or someone to look at the possibility to take water from the Broderick reservoir, and he told me that he didn’t think it would be possible but asked me if I would look into it on my own and thanked me for my interest. Before I went to work on it I thought it would be a good idea to ask the Council that I say I had their permission to work on their behalf so that would make it easier to get information from government departments.
I contacted the Town Administrator and was told this would not be possible because of liability problems.
I talked it over with my secretary who had been with me for 67 years and she advised me to forget this as they seem to not want your help. But sometimes I am a bad listener and determined to continue on my own. So I went to work on it and with the help from the irrigation people in town came up with a workable design that would run approximately 7 miles to the Outlook reservoir, include an intake out of the reservoir pumphouse, 75 HP turbine pump, 8” PVC pipeline and all necessary controls.
It took some time to come up with pricing cost but I was surprised that the final price came in at way cheaper. At that point I would have to deal with Sask Water Security. I found them in Swift Current. Talked to a really nice fellow and he thought it was a very good idea because of the river condition and he would turn it over to the division that calculates the amount of water taken out of the reservoir.
It took another week and a half to reply. At that point they needed an accurate account of the water consumption per month for the past 12 months.
First email from Jeff Hovdebo, Director, Water Use & Aquatic Habitat Protection, dated Friday, June 12:
Hi Dwayne,
I’ve heard back from our Hydrology group and they can probably do the modelling work by the end of the month but we need to confirm the volume of water required.
You had mentioned a demand of 1M gallons per day in summer and 750K gallon per day winter but we need to confirm whether this is US or Imperial gallons, whether this is the peak daily demand for those two periods or if this is the new proposed average daily demand.
To do our assessment we need to know the total annual volume of water required as well as the monthly distribution of that use. The usage that Outlook has previously reported is attached below (all volumes are in cubic metres).
This shows that their maximum peak daily usage was 3890 m3 reported in 2004. This would be equivalent to 856K imperial gallons or 1M US gallons. While a daily peak volume is important for system design it is not an appropriate measure when determining total water usage. As you can see the average water usage for each year is significantly less than the reported maximum (30 to 50%) and as such if we used the maximum rate to calculate the total annual water requirement we would be allocating 2 to 3 times the volume of water that the town actually needs in any give(n) year.
Can you please confirm the volume of water the town is seeking and I’ll get Hydrology working on it.
Cheers.
I sent it on to the town office for a reply, that was on Tuesday, June 16th. On Friday, I got my answer from the Water Security instead of receiving a letter from the Town Council which I have enclosed.
Second email from Jeff Hovdebo of the Water Security Agency, dated Friday, June 19:
Hello Mr. Preus,
Today I received confirmation from the Town of Outlook that you do not represent the Town on this issue and that they have not made any decisions to look for alternative water sources.
As such WSA will not be actioning your inquiry any further.
If there has been some sort of misunderstanding or miscommunication I would suggest you raise it with the Town and that any further correspondence on this matter be submitted to WSA from the Town directly.
Regards.
I never said that I was working on behalf of the Town Council. I did say I was working on my own as a taxpayer.
I can’t understand why the Town Council wouldn’t want to have a reliable source of water.
I was very disappointed by the way I was treated by Council after being asked by one of their members to work on this project.
Any information that readers would like regarding this can contact me.
Dwayne Preus
Outlook, SK
