The chairman of the South Red Deer Regional Wastewater Commission, which serves Olds, Bowden and Innisfail, among other communities, agrees the cost of the project has exploded.
But Dennis Cooper, the mayor of Penhold, says there are good reasons for that. And he's confident that when completed next spring, the system will be able to handle residents' sewage for 25 years, even though Bowden mayor Robb Stuart is skeptical of that.
Under the project, announced in 2005-06, the province announced that all the sewage from Central Alberta communities including Bowden, Olds, Innisfail and Penhold – must be piped to one facility.
The project, originally expected to be completed in 2009, is now expected to be completed next spring. Bowden is expected to be the last community hooked up – likely during the first quarter of 2016.
During a Bowden council meeting, Stuart said originally, the project was projected to cost $107 million. Now it's expected to cost $140 million to complete it.
Cooper confirmed that cost increase.
He said that's because the project was delayed – partly because the Alberta government put it on hold during a slowdown in the economy.
During that time, costs continued to escalate, due to inflation.
“When Alberta was having the slowdown, the province asked us to hold off for a year or two and when we did that, the price of oil went up, therefore the price of pipe went up,” Cooper said.
Lately, the price of oil has been dropping. Cooper was asked if that will help the project's costs.
“Unfortunately we've already bought all the plastic pipe so we're done the big buy,” he said.
Three projects to install pipe to link the communities are currently underway.
Sewage is measured in cubic metres per day. Cooper calls them “cubes” for short.
Currently the town of Olds is producing 4,000 cubic metres of sewage a day, half of which is going into the system in the smaller pipes the Red Deer regional facility currently has. Innisfail currently produces 5,000 cubic metres of sewage a day. It's dumping 500 cubes into the new system.
“That sewer line has a limit of about 5,000 cubes a day and we're now putting about 4,000 cubes a day in it, because there are 2,000 cubes coming from the towns of Penhold, Springbrook and from Red Deer County,” Cooper said.
“So that's why we can't take all of the effluent from Olds, because it's going down that old sewer line. The new sewer line, once it's built, all of Olds' effluent, Innisfail's, Penhold's, Bowden's, will all be going down the new sewer line.
“This is really big pipe,” he says. “The thickness of the walls is over three inches. The last pipe they're putting in is 1.1 metres (in diameter) so it's big pipe. I think the inside is 990 milimetres, so there's a lot of room in that pipe. That'll supply Olds' requirement for sewage for the next 20 to 25 years.”
Dennis Cooper
"When Alberta was having the slowdown, the province asked us to hold off for a year or two and when we did that, the price of oil went up, therefore the price of pipe went up," Cooper said.
