The City of St. Albert is looking to front-end a costly utilities project in the north east to keep homes in Oakmont and Erin Ridge from flooding while also keeping the city open for new development.
Council approved an administration funding request for $2 million from the city’s off-site levy recovery funds (money reimbursed from developers as the city is serviced) to advance the design of three utilities projects during a May 16 meeting. The projects will run along the east side of Erin Ridge and Oakmont. Once the design is complete and the project is tendered, an additional funding request will come before council for the project’s construction, currently estimated at $32 million.
The city is predicting most of the project's future construction cost will need to be financed through debt.
According to a report to council included with the funding request, while St. Albert’s off-site levy water reserve has enough stored up in it to cover $5 million in construction costs, the sanitary and storm projects (a gravity trunk and siphon, and a storm trunk sewer and outfall, amounting to $27 million), will likely need to be borrowed.
The water project won’t be required until 2032, but the city is recommending proceeding now to save costs in the future. After construction, the water line will be used as a transmission line until its needed, the backgrounder said.
Dawny George, the city’s director of engineering, told a council committee May 9 that the city enabled development in its northeast by utilizing oversized capacity already built into the city’s utilities systems.
Now, however, use has outgrown the city’s planning: during high rainfall, storm and sanitary infrastructure is fully submerged under water. Delaying servicing projects will mean the city will have to put a moratorium on development either preventatively, or after a high rainfall event triggers flooding, George said.
While the project will prove costly, George said the city has found areas for savings in the sanitary portion of the project by replacing initial plans for a a lift station to move wastewater between different levels of elevation with a siphon that will instead suck the water to transport it.
The switchup will save at least $2 million in initial capital investment, George said, in addition to saving operating and maintenance costs associated with a lift station.
Regan Lefebvre, St. Albert’s senior manager of utilities, added that the technology can only be used when the landscape features where the project will run can allow it. Further, designing a siphon can be challenging, and is less fool-proof than a lift station.
“Not all municipalities are comfortable with siphon type infrastructure,” Lefebvre said.
Council unanimously approved the $2 million funding request for the project’s design during their May 16 meeting. The motion at council passed on consent, meaning there was no discussion.
