A special meeting was held Thursday at North Battleford City Hall where council approved going ahead with a funding application to the federal government.
Council voted unanimously to approve making a grant application to the federal government for a primary sanitary sewer trunk pipeline upgrade along an approximately seven kilometre route through the city. The project is estimated at $13.6 million, which is reduced from the earlier $18 million estimate presented during the budget deliberations in December.
The grant application would be to the Provincial Territorial Infrastructure Component – Clear Water Waste Water Fund. This fund includes both federal and provincial money.
If the City’s application is successful the grant would cover 75 per cent of the cost of the project, with the City covering the remaining cost. This is a new funding formula for major infrastructure projects. Previously, funding was divided one-third each from the federal, provincial and municipal governments.
The special meeting at City Hall was called on short notice, as an application deadline loomed and it was determined council approval was needed for the grant application to go ahead.
Preliminary engineering work has been done and the project itself is considered “shovel ready.”
City Engineer Bob Anthony explained the project had been identified under the sanitary sewer master plan.
It would meet an urgent need to address a developing bottleneck situation near the Allen Sapp Gallery. That could create a situation where wastewater could come to the surface during wet weather situations.
“This project would greatly reduce the risk of that,” said Anthony.
Also, the city required increased capacity for the expanded subdivisions in the city’s north end in Killdeer and Fairview.
The intention would be to build a lift station around where the old sewage treatment plant is located, and have a combination of a force-main pumping the sewage up the hill and increased gravity capacity up the hill and down to the existing wastewater treatment plant.
This council approval covers only the application itself. A separate resolution would be needed to go ahead with the project. However, City Manager Jim Puffalt made clear the new force main must go ahead, as the regulating authority cited the need to increase capacity “fairly quickly,” he said.
“This is a project that is required,” said Puffalt.
City Director of Finance David Gillan indicated there were many options available to address the City’s portion of the cost, including debt, new levies, debentures and other options. It would require external funding, he indicated.
The project would take place over a number of years, so the money would be spread out over time.
The use of debt for City projects was a hot topic during the recent budget process and at the special meeting, councillors repeated what they had indicated before — that they were comfortable with the use of debt for long-term projects.
“This is certainly a long-term project that I would feel very comfortable using long-term debt for,” said Councillor Greg Lightfoot, given that “this is something that’s going to be in the ground for 50, 60, 80 years.”
As for what happens if the City doesn’t get the funding, “our long-term debt discussion becomes quite a bit more,” said Puffalt.
Puffalt indicated to reporters after the meeting that administration wanted to discuss the debt issue some more with council in February or March, in order to have an understanding of where they were going with the project.
“We always want to be a step ahead and be ready to go when something happens,” he said.
