The province is offering Dauphin financial and technical support for updates to two lift stations and to install UV disinfection at the water treatment plant.
The Manitoba Water Stewardship Board will cost share 50 per cent with the city for these projects.
“A couple of weeks now Manitoba Water Stewardship Board gave me a call and said ‘we have some money for you for the lift station upgrades and for the UV disinfection.’ So that is how it came about,” said City Manager Sharla Griffiths.
The cost for both lift stations is around 800 thousand dollars and the cost to install UV disinfection is about 1.2 million.
“They have some money in the budget. They don’t have the large amount of money that we need for a 13 million dollar project to cost share that.”
The city's lagoon upgrades are expected to cost 13 million dollars.
“It is very close to reaching the capacity for our population and the use as we have it. We do have special permission from the province to continue operating as we have been, noting at the first available opportunity we will upgrade it to meet our licencing requirements.”
Griffiths continues, “We did stress that the lagoon is our number one priority. However, if they are offering money it’s important that we take it.”
City council passed a resolution to ask for assistance with these projects at the Monday meeting. This will initiate the process to get the funding and technical support in place. Council will then consider the projects during the 2019 budget deliberations.
