One of the largest infrastructure programs undertaken by the City of Estevan in recent years has officially opened.
A ceremony was held Friday to mark the opening of the Wellock Road water reservoir, which is located directly behind St. Joseph's Hospital.
The $8.9 million facility was deemed necessary for Estevan's future growth as the system was nearing its capacity. The six million-litre reservoir will also provide residents on the north end of Estevan with much better water pressure eventually.
Although the City is paying the bulk of the tab, both the federal and provincial governments are also involved in the project. The federal government is kicking in more than $1.5 million through their gas tax fund, while the province has provided a tax-free loan to the City, which will result in savings of around $1.3 million.
Representatives from all three levels of government were on hand for the ceremony and touched on the importance of the project for the future of Estevan.
"The completion of this project now means the City of Estevan is better equipped to meet the water needs of this rapidly growing city," said Souris-Moose Mountain MP Ed Komarnicki, who was representing Minister of Infrastructure Denis Lebel.
"(The reservoir) has got the potential to service not only the City of Estevan but potentially communities in and around Estevan. I think it is a great investment."
Estevan MLA Doreen Eagles spoke on behalf of Government Relations Minister Jim Reiter at Friday's event and noted the reservoir will be critical for Estevan's growth, especially in the northwest area where a handful of developments are already underway or in the planning stages.
"It will help the City deliver water with the quality and quantity necessary to meet the needs of developing areas to supplement the existing system," Eagles said.
Mayor Roy Ludwig said Friday's ceremony was the culmination of years of work by many at City Hall. He noted that without the reservoir, the City would have been limited in how much it could expand by.
"It's an investment in our future," Ludwig said. "We could have had limited expansion, but more of the problem we were having is we couldn't get the proper water pressure in certain quadrants of the city. Over by the Comp, we could only get 25 to 30 PSI, which wasn't enough, especially in the summer time."
Water/Wastewater Treatment Plant Manager Kevin Sutter expanded on the new reservoir and some of the features.
Sutter noted the facility features a geothermal heating system, which uses the treated water from the treatment plant to heat the entire building. He added that having a second reservoir also allows the City to create a two-zone pressure system.
"Everything north of the tracks essentially is going to be fed from this reservoir," Sutter said. "We can go onto the computer here and type in whatever pressure we want. The north side of the tracks will go to that pressure. We were limited to how high we could raise the pressure here, now we have two pressure zones that are independent of each other."
Sutter said residents north of the tracks will not notice an immediate increase as the pressure will be raised gradually to avoid damaging any of the water lines.
Prior to the opening of the new reservoir, Sutter said the City had 1.7 million gallons of water storage. He said the new reservoir bumps them to around three million gallons, which gives them much more leeway were something to go wrong at the water treatment plant.
