Winnipeg faces $5.64M tab to repair water-treatment plant problems

The repair tab for Winnipeg's water-treatment plant will be millions less than a worst-case-scenario envisioned by engineers provided the city dispenses with a chemical-production facility at the R.M. of Springfield site.

Winnipeg's water and waste department says in a new report ithas spent $615,000 to date to address deficiencies at its eight-year-old plant, which was completed just east of the Red River Floodway at a cost of $300-million.

The report states it will cost $5.64 million to address the remaining problems.

Council water and waste chair Brian Mayes (St. Vital) said this comes as something of a relief, since engineers originally estimated the repairs could be much higher before the city filed a lawsuit in an effort to recover some of the costs.

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"It's better thanthe potential for twentyor $30 million, which was the number being used in the lawsuit. Our staff has taken a look at what we can do to mitigate our losses," Mayes said.

One of those mitigation measures involves the potentialdecommissioning of a failedsodium hypochlorite-production facility thatwas originally built on site. The city may close down this component of the plant, rather than fix it.

The city built a facility to produce the bleach-likecompoundon site to eliminate the risk of vehicle collisions with trains carrying highly volatile pure chlorine very close to the city.

"When the plant was built there was some argument to do it on site for security reasons, for public safety reasons. I don't know what the staff now view as the safety or security issues, if they're confident thatwe can go forward with bringing it from outside," Mayes said.

"Obviously, there are some questions the public's going to have."

Winnipeg's water and waste department said there is no risk involved in transporting sodium hypochlorite, which is nowhere near as volatile as pure chlorine.

"Since our equipment for generating sodium hypochlorite on site has failed, we have simply purchased sodium hypochlorite and had it trucked into the water treatment plant to treat the water," Winnipeg spokesperson Michelle Finley said in a statement.

"We do not have any safety concerns with this approach. Both methods that have been used do not handle [or] involve pure chlorine. As stated in the report, the water and waste department is working to complete a business case to determine the optimum solution be it fixing the equipment or continue hauling sodium hypochlorite."

The construction of thetreatment plant upgraded Winnipeg's water quality through a series of additional purification measures, including ultraviolet radiation and biologically active carbon filtration, that removes algae, micro-organisms and potential pathogens such as cryptosporidium.

Since it opened in 2009, the plant has suffered from a series of problems, none of which affect water quality. They includethe failure of a chlorine-production facility built on site;leaky roofs on its main building, chemical-storage building and the chlorine facility;corroded concrete storage tanks;the failure of standby generators and performance issues with its dewatering cells.

In 2015, the city attempted to recover funds for the repairs by filing a lawsuit against consulting firm AECOM, construction company PCL and eight other firms.

This court action evaporated in 2017, when the city disclosed it took too long to file a statement of claim. Chief administrative officer Doug McNeil said thisdeprived taxpayers of a chance to recover somewhere between $6 million and $20 million.

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In the wake of the lawsuit's failure, the city fired a veteran lawyer, who has since sued the city for wrongful dismissal. The city has also conducted a legal review whichCoun. Janice Lukes (South Winnipeg-St. Norbert)hasderided as insufficient in depth or detail.

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A separate report authored by water and waste engineering managerGeoff Patton talliesup the money spent to date on repairs for the facility and also estimates the future repairs.

As of Jan. 25, the city spent $615,000 to address some of the deficiencies, Patton states in the report, which will come before council's water and waste committee next week.

The report states the city may be forced to spend up to $5.35 million to fix the leaky roof on the main building, $265,000 to fix concrete tanks and also devote $21,000 to the decommissioning of the chlorine-production facility,if the city decides it makes financial sense to purchase chlorine.