Thompson city council agreed at their Jan. 23 meeting to request money and other aid from the Manitoba Water Services Board to equip the water treatment plant with a backup electrical generator.
In a 7-2 vote, council approved seeking technical and financial assistance from the board, which approved a capital funding request from the city that was submitted in 2022, agreeing to pay up to half of the $700,000 cost for the purchase and installation of a diesel powered generator to continue providing the plant with electricity in the case of a power outage.
Currently, the plant only has diesel-powered pumps to distribute already-treated water to the city when the power is out. There is no ability to treat any further water until power is restored.
Deputy mayor Kathy Valentino said the need for backup electricity has been known for years, having been identified as something that would be beneficial to have back in 2016 when the city signed an agreement to take over responsibility for the water treatment plant at the beginning of 2018.
Councillors Duncan Wong and Chiew Chong voted against entering an agreement with the water services board for the funding and technical assistance to pursue this project. Chong was concerned about what would happen if the project cost rose beyond $700,000 and ongoing costs for maintenance that the generators would require.
City manager Anthony Mcinnis said cost overruns would be the city’s responsibility and would have to be approved by council.
“At that time we could ask the province for additional [money] but there’s no guarantee that we will receive that,” he said, adding that having another generator would increase the cost of a testing contract that the city already has for its other generators and add to preventative maintenance tasks that city staff perform. “With any new piece of infrastructure there’s always a new maintenance cost allowance that has to be made for it.”
For Wong, it seems pointless to install a generator at the water treatment plant when there isn’t one at the pumphouse, owned by Vale, that supplies raw river water both to its mining operations and to the city-operated plant. Once untreated water in the wells at the plant when the power goes out is treated and pumped out, backup power would not make the plant capable of producing more drinkable water.
“The money is not well spent, in my opinion,” Wong said, noting that Manitoba Hydro has a good track record of restoring power quickly in Thompson when outages do occur.
McInnis said it would be ideal for every part of the Thompson water system — Vale’s pumphouse, the water treatment plant and the sewage treatment plant — to have backup power but that getting this generator installed would bring them one step closer.
“If power did go down for extended periods, instead of the city asking Manitoba Hydro to provide two emergency generators — one to pump, one to run a water treatment plant — we could rely on our one at the water treatment plant. You’re only asking Manitoba Hydro in a disaster situation to provide one.”
Talks can still be held with Vale to see if they would install backup power to the pumphouse, McInnis added.
The previous council approved budgeting $400,000 for this project under the utility fund, said the city’s development and technical services director Lyle Safronetz.
“I’m pretty confident that if we have this part of the puzzle that it will definitely be supported by water coming from the river one way or another,” said Mayor Colleen Smook.
