One of the water pipelines snakes towards Prince Albert’s water treatment plant. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski
Finally, the news residents of central Saskatchewan have been waiting for.
The Water Security Agency has given the communities of North Battleford, Prince Albert and Melfort the all clear to tap into the North Saskatchewan River for their water needs.
The flow was shut off on July 22nd after 250 thousand litres of oil spilled into the river near Maidstone and drifted downstream hundreds of kilometres. Communities scrambled to find alternate water supplies. Prince Albert Mayor, Greg Dionne says everyone pulled together. He is breathing a sigh of relief, knowing the worst is behind them.
“It is just such a big relief off our shoulders,” he said. “I have got to give our staff, all of our contractors and the government credit. We went through this whole process without disruptions in delivering safe water to our residents.”
Tapping back into the river is not a simple process. Extra precautions have to be put in place and more testing has to be done. Husky will also help North Battleford and Prince Albert pay for additional temporary water treatment measures.
North Battleford says it is taking additional precautions before it reopens its water intake to the North Saskatchewan River.
Those steps include, pretreating any river water through a sand filtration system that is being developed right now by GE Electric. That system won’t be in place until late fall. Until then, the City will continue to use its water reserves, as well as the pipeline from the Town of Battleford.
Prince Albert is planning to use the North Saskatchewan River as early as next Monday or Tuesday. It has been tapping into the South Saskatchewan River with an overland pipeline, but that system will freeze once the temperature tips below zero.
Ash Olesen with the provincial environment department is confident the crises is over.
“Overall, we are confident we continue to move out of the crises portion of the recovery and more into an operation portion where our staff can continue to provide their best expertise on the mitigation and recovery process.”
Advisories restricting recreational use and livestock watering have also now been lifted. The animal death toll from the spill stands at 146 and has now leveled off.
A full report into the Husky oil spill is expected to be released in a few weeks.