City revisiting approach to selling treated water

The last time the City of Saskatoon updated the agreement to sell its water to nearby communities, Pierre Trudeau was prime minister and Ronald Reagan was U.S. president.

With two of the largest communities nearby, Martensville and Warman, now near 10,000 people or more, the 1983 approach to regional water needs to be refreshed, said the City of Saskatoon’s water and sewer engineering manager, Galen Heinrichs.

“There just needs to be a big rethink because these are large cities now,” Heinrichs said in an interview on Thursday.

Changes to the way Saskatoon sells water to regional communities are proposed in a new report that will be considered by city council at Monday’s governance and priorities committee meeting.

The most noteworthy change entails a decrease in the rate charged to regional entities, the largest two being Martensville and Warman.

The so-called reseller rate would more accurately reflect the cost of supplying water and set the table for future water and waste water partnerships, Heinrichs said.

“It doesn’t take much imagination to see that those two communities will one day be adjacent (to Saskatoon).”

The reduced water rate would mean about $2 million less a year for Saskatoon, but that would be offset by money coming from Martensville to pay for a connection to Saskatoon’s sewage system, the report says.

Saskatoon sells 11.6 per cent of its metered water to cities, towns, acreages and businesses located outside city limits. It sells the water through SaskWater, a provincial Crown corporation, under a deal that dates back to 1983.

The city applies a 30 per cent surcharge to water sold outside its borders. Heinrichs said the rates are too high since the City of Saskatoon does not have to pay for adding or maintaining infrastructure outside city limits like it does inside the city.

About one-fifth of the water sold outside Saskatoon goes to Martensville and one-fifth goes to Warman. The city supplies potable water to about 38,000 people outside Saskatoon.

In 2014, Saskatoon city hall struck a deal with the City of Martensville to connect the latter to the city’s water and waste water system. That project has been delayed as the city’s rates with SaskWater are reconsidered.

Officials at the City of Martensville could not be reached for comment.

Heinrichs explained this connection means building pipes and, since Martensville is elevated, that will make the project simpler, with gravity doing much of the work a pump system would otherwise have to do.

Saskatoon’s waste water treatment plant in the Silverwood Heights neighbourhood has the capacity to handle sewage from Warman, he said.

Saskatoon has also partnered with the cities of Martensville and Warman, the Town of Osler and the Rural Municipality of Corman Park in the regional P4G group.

“You want to be able to get along well with the partners you have in the region,” Heinrichs said.

New revenue from Martensville for connecting to Saskatoon’s sewage system is estimated at $900,000 to $1.5 million a year, the report says. In total, the revenue from the Saskatoon water and waste water utility totals about $155 million a year. Any lost revenue would represent less than one per cent of that total.

Martensville uses a lagoon system for sewage now, but it has reached capacity, the report says.

Martensville pumps its sewage into a series of lagoons south of the city. The material settles on the bottom of the lagoon, but effluent is discharged through a canal to the South Saskatchewan River.

That effluent is not the same as raw sewage, Heinrichs said.

He called Saskatoon a “unique” community because it built separate pipe systems for storm water and sewage.