Scott Hayes | [email protected]
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The centrifuge replacement project at Jasper鈥檚 wastewater treatment plant has been set back by a few significant delays, reported Director of Operations and Utilities John Greathead during Tuesday鈥檚 municipal council meeting.
The most significant delay was caused by a major water leak, the search for which took the better part of a year and a half. It also took pretty much all of the tools in the operations toolkit to locate.
鈥淲e were finally able to find the water leak at S-Block that we had been looking for a long time. We tried everything on that one. We used acoustic listening devices that was able to narrow it down, and then we ended up doing some zone metering to exactly determine which leg of the water main that leak was appearing on. I used my witching sticks and we also deployed smart balls. All of us were off by about the same variable,鈥� Greathead said.
鈥淲e were losing about 1.3 million litres of water a day.鈥�
With the drainage being on an 鈥渁ncient riverbed,鈥� he said, the leaking water was simply disappearing into the ground.
Once they discovered the source of the issue, they saw that the pipe was split almost two-thirds of the way around its circumference and had a maximum gap of a quarter inch. The immense flow from the crack had eroded some of the underlying rocks.
鈥淚t was a real head-scratcher,鈥� Greathead said. 鈥淭hat loss of water . . . we were shocked that we had never seen a symptom of it or any appearance of that water until we actually got right down beside the water main.鈥�
Despite the magnitude of the issue, municipal operations was able to fix it with only a one-day shutoff period and minimal disruption to the area.
The news still took some members of municipal council aback. It shocked Greathead.
鈥淚t was just disappearing,鈥� he said.
鈥淚n our total water production, what percentage would that have been that we were now saving?鈥� asked Coun. Ralph Melnyk.
鈥淚t increased our production by about one-third in the last year,鈥� Greathead responded. 鈥淲e actually had to notify AEP [Alberta Environment and Protected Areas] when it was noticed that we were going to be in exceedness of our water license usage.鈥�
Beyond that, there has been other progress on the wastewater plant work. Staff members have been able to run the centrifuge in manual as they work toward implementing full automation mode.
