Council looking at clean water treatment cell

By Kenyon Stronski
Taber Times
reporter@tabertimes.com

Another cleaning project passed across council’s desks at their Jan. 6 regular meeting. The ask is from Public Works for $60,000 for a cell cleaning project.

In the agenda, it states to ensure a quality water supply to the town of Taber, the raw water cells should be cleaned of sludge and organics every 10 years. “In discussions with staff, there is no documentation of when the raw water cells were cleaned. Public Works staff organized cleaning of the north raw water cell in 2022 and the south raw water cell should be cleaned to ensure consistency in the cells.”

Director of Engineering and Public Works, Gary Scherer stepped forward to explain the process. “Yes, another critical maintenance job. We cleaned up the north one last year but we took away from the operating fund to do so and this year we’re looking at a bigger area because it’s a bigger cell and there’s a lot more to do in there. We might have to purchase aeration equipment with this project because there is aeration for treatment in the cells so that could be the other $10,000 but we’re not quite sure yet until we actually open and pump everything down, clean out the cell and check on the equipment.”

Coun. Carly Firth asked how effective the last cell cleaning was.

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