The provincial government has ponied-up the last bit of funding needed to complete the new sewer line that will extend from Bowden to Olds.“We have the final funding approved from the sewer line,” said Dennis Cooper, the chair of the South Red Deer Regional Wastewater Commission.The Bowden-Olds components are the third phase of the project. Phase one was putting in the line from Penhold to Innisfail, while the second phase will actually be the last one, he said, which is taking the line from Penhold to meet with the City of Red Deer line.Cooper said the commission is “really pleased (Ric) McIver came forward with the funding.” McIver is the new Alberta Transportation minister.The total cost of the project is estimated to be $130-million, he said.John Lear, a public affairs officer for Alberta Transportation, said the provincial grant is covering 90 per cent of the cost. He said due to additional costs incurred for land acquisition, construction and the tendering process for phase three, the provincial government has approved the grant increasing from $23,796,000 to $34,225,530. The approved total costs for phase three have changed from about $26.4 million to $38,028,367.Hooking the whole system into Red Deer will probably take until 2015, Cooper said, but hopefully by 2013 they'll be relieving the Olds system by pumping effluent to the old regional Waskasoo sewer system.Once the line is hooked up to the City of Red Deer's and everything is ready to go, the order the towns will be hooked in is Olds, Innisfail and Bowden.The portions of the line that have been built are in the process of being tested, Cooper said.“Right now they're testing the line with water,” he said.For the second and third phases the commission is using right-of-ways instead of running it in ditches along the road after there were some impacts on farmers' mobility during construction.“Because of phase one we changed how we did business,” Cooper said.The Red Deer MLAs, Cal Dallas and Mary Anne Jablonski helped lobby for the funds, he said. Alberta Transportation Minister Ric McIver has recognized the importance of completing both the Bowden-Olds and Penhold-Red Deer phases, he said.The construction tender for the Bowden to Olds line was awarded in May to Hamm Construction, a company from Saskatchewan. The company is doing work on both the wastewater and the water lines, a twinning process that was put in place to save both commissions money.Land is currently being secured for the completion of the Penhold to Red Deer, Cooper said.“We're hoping next year we can do the last phase,” he said.
