WEYBURN – A full safety review of the Albert Douglas Dam will be conducted by the City of Weyburn, as a number of repairs are necessary, and the infrastructure has only been inspected once since it was built in the early 1980s.
City engineer Jennifer Wilkinson explained that the dam was constructed by the PFRA to expand the city’s raw water reservoir at Nickle Lake.
Safety reviews should be carried out every five years, according to the Canadian Dam Association and the Water Security Agency. The last safety review of the Douglas Dam was done in 2009, and that was the only review done since the dam was built.
Since that review, the city and area experienced a 100-year flood in 2011, and there are various structural and operational components not in working order at the Albert Douglas dam, which have led to multiple safety incidents, including a near miss that occurred this spring, said Wilkinson.
Requests for proposals were sent out, and the city received six bids. The winning bid was by KGS Group, who bid $119,908, over the budgeted amount of $100,000 set by the City. The company has carried out 39 dam inspections, and of the six firms that bid on the RFP, they scored the highest for experience with PFRA dams.
Wilkinson explained the structural issues with the Albert Douglas Dam need to be properly investigated and documented so the City can move forward with rehabilitation, operational and emergency response planning for the dam.
She noted the department will look over their projects for this year to find the extra $20,000 required in order to accommodate the cost of the dam review.
• In other council business, council awarded contracts for asphalt repairs to the Weyburn Airport runways, and for line painting at the airport and in the city.
For the asphalt repairs, the airport requires repairs in three different areas with a total of $200,000 allocated for the asphalt and the line painting.
The city has made application for a Community Airport Partnership for a 50-per-cent grant, and the application is still being processed.
The contract for asphalt repairs to taxiways B and C, and to the secondary runway, was awarded to ASL Paving for a total of $151,464.
The contract for crack filling was awarded to Genco Asphalt, which offered a rate of $5,850 a day, plus $2.60 a litre for the volume of crack filler used.
Asked if she is confident that Genco can stay within the budget at a rate of $5,850 a day, Wilkinson said if the City doesn’t get the CAP funding they will reduce the scope of repairs so only the biggest cracks will be filled.
Coun. Mel Van Betuw noted that five or six years ago, the City would struggle to get one or two quotes for this kind of work, and said it was nice to see a larger number of quotes that they could choose the best contractor for the job.
Asked if the City works staff could do the crack-filling in-house, Wilkinson said the City does not have the necessary equipment and staff to take that on, but they could look into developing this ability in the future.
For the line-painting part of the job, both the city portion and the airport contracts were awarded to APLS of Red Deer, Alta., for a total cost of $86,036, the second lowest of five proposals sent in to the City.
In the city, the job will be to do centre lines, crosswalks, intersections and no parking zones, while at the airport, the job entails the markings on the taxiway and main runway.
At this point, there will just the one application of line painting, and it should all be done prior to the Oil Show in June, said Wilkinson. Some school zone lines will be repainted in the fall, but that is not included in this contract.
• The city will expand the number of groundwater monitoring wells for the landfill from the current 19 wells in place around the perimeter of the landfill.
The city has found there are data gaps with the wells now in place, and the Ministry of the Environment has made it a requirement for the city to do more investigation to determine whether there is further migration of contaminants from the landfill.
With a Request for Proposals sent out, four proposals were received by the city, and Matrix Solutions Inc. was chosen as the winning bid in the amount of $49,502.
Matrix is proposing 17 new wells, with more nested well pairs and better background well locations that will produce more valuable data results.
Wilkinson noted that the requirements set by Environment are getting much more stringent in regard to landfills, and this work should help the city to meet those standards.
