North Battleford council has given the green light to purchase equipment necessary to replace the actuators in the ground water treatment plant No. 1, as well as to reconstruct the waste management facility leachate station.
Council unanimously approved the resolution after being provided costs for the proposed renovations.
The cost of the actuators, installation and programming and electrical supplies totals $292,458.50. Total cost for the leachate station SCADA radio tower, programming and electrical supplies, pumps and controls, installation, supply of materials and the air blower amounts to $475,687.22.
That brings the grand total to $768,145.72. That is lower than the nearly $1 million tender they would have had to shell out had council accepted the lowest bid from the tenders earlier this fall. The items needed are being purchased from a variety of suppliers.
Still a point of contention for councillors was the original estimate in the 2011 Utility Capital budget for the project. Administration had allocated $100,000 for the groundwater treatment plant actuators replacement and $150,000 for the leachate lift station reconstruction.
Councillor Grace Lang wondered again why the city's budget figures were way off. Public Works Director Stewart Schafer responded that the amounts in the budget were based on estimates from five years before. The costs escalated in the meantime and were never revised in the budget, he admitted.
Despite the fact the projects were under-budgeted, Councillor Trent Houk was nevertheless happy the City took the advice of the consultants and decided to go a different direction by purchasing the equipment directly as opposed to incurring a heavier cost from accepting the tender.
"This way we're saving close to or approximately $400,000," Houk noted.
