Wapiti Valley, Saskatchewan. Photo courtesy of Enns Kivin, Facebook.
With freeze-up fast approaching, the communities of Prince Albert, North Battleford and Melfort will have systems in place to ensure residents will have clean, safe water from the North Saskatchewan River.
This follows a spill of nearly 250 thousand litres of oil into the river near Maidstone in July, which shut down water intakes and forced communities to take extraordinary measures to find alternate supplies.
Prince Albert ran what amounted to a 30 kilometer fire hose all the way to the South Saskatchewan River, but that system was only good until freeze-up. Since late last month, the city’s water treatment plant has been back in full operation with the addition of added carbon filtration.
Water Security Agency spokesman, Patrick Boyle, says the system is working extremely well.
“And that includes the Prince Albert rural utility that is up and serving all customers and that would also include the Muskoday First Nation,” he said.
North Battleford is still using a large hose to tap into the Battleford water supply while that city completes some dredging work and beefs up its water filtration plant, which should be complete in about three weeks.
Boyle says extensive testing and ongoing monitoring will ensure the water is safe for all communities along the river.
“Yes, that is absolutely the purpose of our independent program where we did our testing and water safety assessment,” he said. “And that water safety assessment was reviewed by an internal government science committee and also experts from the world of academia.”
Further downstream on the James Smith Cree Nation, Husky has reimbursed the band about 140 thousand dollars for cleanup.
Husky is also expected to release a detailed report on the July 21st spill later this month. It was one of the largest environmental disasters in the province.