Yellowknife’s new water treatment plant opened its doors to visitors for the first time on Monday.
The facility cost a fraction over $30 million to build and began operations this summer, just in time to end a weeks-long boil-water advisory across the city.
Such advisories should be a thing of the past as the new facility boasts an advanced water filtration system.
Moose FM took this photo tour with city staff.
Superintendent Scott Gillard and director of public works Chris Greencorn gave Moose FM a tour.The facility can handle 20 million litres of water per day, and could support more than 30,000 people.At the heart of the facility are new water filters, or membranes, which do a much better job of cleaning the city’s water than was previously the case.Scott Gillard holds up an example of the new water filtration system.Water passes through this filter, which helps to remove particles as tiny as one micron (one thousandth of a millimetre).Gillard believes the new filtration system makes boil-water advisories a thing of the past.These tanks contain sodium hypochlorite. This chemical replaces chlorine in the water cleaning process and is said to be a safer solution.The facility employs three staff and costs around $1.3 million to run each year. Testing of the water supply can be performed on-site.This instrument tests for turbidity, or how much silt and debris is in the water. (When Moose FM toured the facility, turbidity was at around 0.012 NTU. For context, the 2003 boil-water advisory in Yellowknife saw turbidity approach 50 NTU.)These screens are part of the small control centre in one corner of the building, from which operators can inspect the entire system.The next question for Yellowknife is where its water comes from. This is the view from the facility, looking out over Yellowknife Bay. The city could decide to draw water directly from the bay when its old pipe to Yellowknife River comes up for replacement, in the near future.If the city decides to pump water from Yellowknife Bay, contamination from the toxic remnants of nearby Giant Mine will be a concern. This bland corridor could form part of a new arsenic treatment installation if the city decides to go ahead with it.
The Government of the Northwest Territories has signed a new two-year Non-Insured Health Benefits agreement with Indigenous Services Canada to ensure short-term funding stability for these benefits.
The N.W.T.’s Power Corporation plans to replace 74 hydro poles this year, all of which are located in the town of Hay River. Poles due for replacement include those in the area of Ptarmigan and Robin where a set of extended unplanned outages happened last month. To begin what the company reported is “critical maintenance work,” they are planning a power outage for this weekend.
The Government of the Northwest Territories has introduced a new Encampment Response Framework to help guide the response to encampments in Yellowknife.
The Northwest Territories Power Corporation has announced a number of planned outages that will occur in several communities around the territory over the next week.
The Nahɂą Dehé Dene Band, Dehcho Divisional Education Council, Nahanni Butte District Education Authority and the territorial government just announced that a new Charles Yohin School is in the works. A plan is in place to look at cost comparisons for either renovating the existing school or building a new one.
