New reservoir almost complete

Times Reporter 

 

Just over two years ago, it was announced at council that a new water reservoir was needed or the town could be in trouble in the case of a waterline break. 

The potable water storage was at less than two days, and in order to bring the town to where it needed to be for safety measures, the project was estimated at nearly $10 million.  

In early 2012 tenders were in for the new Wildflower Reservoir and a budget of $7.2 million was given. The prediction was that the project would be complete by the end of 2012.  

With the water line break in January of this year, construction was delayed. There have been a few construction challenges that are being cleared up and have to be addressed prior to the commissioning.  

“There’s just some issues with the yard pipe that services the reservoir from the east Calgary regional waterline. The contractor has to just open up their yard pipe and verify the connection to the pump station and reservoir is done correctly,” said Jesse Parker, director of operations and engineering for the town. 

Parker said the contractor is still working on issues they believe are due to the break that occurred in January, which they say delayed everything over all.

“We’ve kind of been of the opinion that things should have been finished earlier than now, there’s a bit of a back and forth that has been going on for some time now, and we have been collecting liquidated damages for the contract,” said Parker. 

The town gave the contractor an extension after the pipe burst until the spring. Since spring, the town has been collecting liquidated damages but it hasn’t had the expected effect of speeding things up.

Parker said in terms of liquidated damages, the town is collecting engineering fees associated with project management and engineering on the project as damage for being late.

Parker said the piping, pumps and reservoir itself are in place; it’s just a matter of correcting a couple of deficiencies that have been identified and starting commissioning with EPCOR. He is hoping that it will be completed and they will be able to seed the landscape before winter hits.