New specialized equipment that was purchased to identify leaks and infiltration in the municipality's water and wastewater infrastructure is paying off, council heard last week.
The manager of Sundre's operations presented a report updating elected officials on his department's responsibilities in the municipality, as well as several highlights of the past year and plans for the future.
"The operations department is responsible for water and wastewater, gas, roads and solid waste, including storm," said Jim Hall during the Dec. 11 meeting.
"The various sub-departments strive to provide safe roads and sidewalks, provide a safe supply of natural gas, drinking water and treatment of wastewater, including monitoring the contracted solid waste collection," he said, adding, "The operations department works closely with all other departments to achieve common community goals."
Among the department's mission plan is to strive towards ensuring clean, safe roads as well as sidewalks through regular maintenance, traffic signage and stormwater management. Additionally, staff work to make sure the community can confidently rely on a sustainable, clean and safe drinking water supply, he said.
The department has 8.25 full-time employees (FTE) and two contracted staff, which breaks down as follows: director of finance, 0.25 FTE; one manager of operations; one operational administrative assistant; three level two water and wastewater operators; one roads senior operator and fleet manager; one roads operator; two gas utility operators; as well as a summer student. Snow removal for trails, sidewalks and municipal buildings is contracted out, he said.
Ongoing projects include continuous efforts to identify and repair water distribution leaks as well as groundwater infiltration of wastewater lines, and to prioritize future infrastructure projects based on risk and lifespan, he said.
Looking ahead to the next couple of years, operations will among other projects be aiming to create geographic information system mapping for all of its departments, continue the quality effluents study with Alberta Environment and Parks and Environment Canada to assess the wastewater treatment facility, and work collaboratively as needed with the Community Services Department on parks, landscaping as well as the trails project, he said.
The operations manager's full report is available through the Town of Sundre's website, www.sundre.com, by hovering the cursor over the "Government" tab and clicking on "Council Meeting Agendas and Minutes." Then, just select the Dec. 11 meeting's agenda under the "2017 Agendas" tab.
Coun. Cheri Funke inquired whether operations department staff are responsible for cleaning up the Sundre Recycling Centre, located in the southwest near the soccer fields.
"Between operations and community services, it's a working agreement," said Hall, adding there have been times when misuse of the facility has resulted in "quite a chaos there, where people just throw garbage bags everywhere."
When that's the case, whoever is available within the operations department will be tasked with cleaning up, he said.
As for "regular maintenance, day-to-day, community services in the past has had an individual, but now they've scheduled it into their outside people to check the recycle centre," said Hall, adding he also when possible stops by to check the site on his way to work early in the morning.
"It's a collaborative approach, but community services checks that daily and does the tidy-ups if there's some garbage on the ground."
Mayor Terry Leslie then asked about highlights regarding the reduction of leakage in the municipal water supply since new pieces of equipment were purchased to make much easier finding problem pipes in both the water and wastewater systems.
Whereas finding leaks used to depend largely on guesswork, the new equipment has facilitated the process of identifying leaking pipes, which led to the discovery of significant amounts of treated water being wasted from the schools' water lines that run near the Sundre Skatepark, Hall said, referring to 70 linear metres of pipe.
"The entire pipeline was degraded and leaking. Those savings on that one alone were (about) 400 cubes of water a day," he said.
"So that's repaired. Our numbers dropped down by four or five litre per second. That was pretty substantial."
Additional savings are generated simply by no longer having to hire a contractor to search for leaks in suspected problem pipes, he said.
"All the work stays in-house," he said.
"We don't have a contractor coming in, guessing where a leak is, and then when you have a dry hole they go home and you still pay them."
Following further conversation, council carried a motion to accept as information the operations manager's report.
