Some of the mile and a half of pipeline going into the ground in Weyburn

There is roughly a mile and a half of pipe going into the ground in Weyburn.

It's the city's new "force main," a pressurized pipe system that connects a sewage pumping station to a lagoon where wastewater is collected for treatment.

In Weyburn, the new force main is a large pipe - this one is 20 inches in diameter - that will travel under roads, a park and even a river. 

Weyburn's director of engineering Blaine Frank said, in years past, putting the pipe in the ground would have been a lot more complicated and involved open excavation.  

But, with modern boring machines - meaning "machines that drill tunnels for pipelines," not "machines that are the opposite of exciting" - that is no longer the case.

"It's not that hard of an operation anymore and they're getting better at it every year, so they can bore quite a ways under roads or whatever," Frank said.

The pipe is being put in the ground as part of a major upgrade to Weyburn's sewage system.  The city is also replacing its Weyburn's lift station and constructing a new 80-acre lagoon to replace the current 50-acre one, built in 1958.

Weyburn is growing and the city's population now sits at over 10,000 people. Thanks to the busy surrounding oilfields and a world leading innovative carbon-capture and sequestration project nearby, there is a lot of opportunity in "The Opportunity City."

Obviously growth is a good thing, but it is also presenting some infrastructure challenges for the city.   

One of those challenges was the capacity of the city's existing sewage system, which serves not only the city of Weyburn, but the hamlet of North Weyburn and a couple of businesses outside of city limits. 

"The existing lift station was last remodeled back in 1976 and was getting pretty old," Frank said. "When the engineering and consulting firms reviewed it, they found there just wasn't enough room in the old lift station to make it work and they recommended building a brand new lift station."

Construction on a new lift station began last fall.

Back-ups were becoming an issue following major rainfalls.   With the new lift station, which pumps and a wider force main pipeline, that is no longer going to be the case.  The work is expected to be completed this summer.

Another major piece of the equation is a new 80-acre sewage lagoon, which will have more capacity than the existing 50-acre lagoon and should be finished by fall of this year.

The old lagoon - which, Frank says, attracts a variety of bird species is a popular spot for local birdwatchers - will still be used in the future when heavy flows require some extra capacity. 

It almost goes without saying that infrastructure projects involving sewage disposal aren't as glamourous as new arenas, parks, or roads. 

But no one wants sewage back-ups in their home or business, either, so a properly functioning sewage system is clearly a must-have item for every community. 

Building a new sewage lift station is costing the city of Weyburn approximately $6 million.  Constructing a new lagoon is another $6 million.  Replacing the force main pipeline and pumps cost $2.2 million. 

That's a lot of money, even for a growing city. 

Fortunately, the federal and provincial governments were able to provide a significant amount of funding via infrastructure programs.    

"Without the funding from the federal and provincial governments, these projects would have had to have been delayed for a number of years until the city put enough away in reserves," Frank said.  "Then you could have sewage backing up into areas and flooding basements.  We may have had to look at holding up [the city's] growth because we were just getting overloaded."

The governments of Canada and Saskatchewan are each contributing $1.99 million to the sewage lift station replacement, and $731,255 to the force main replacement.   Those contributions came under the Building Canada Fund - Communities Component (BCF-CC), an infrastructure funding program designed for communities with populations under 100,000.

The sewage lagoon construction received: $1.3 million through the Federal Gas Tax Program and a further $500,000 from each the federal and provincial governments through the Municipal Rural Infrastructure Fund (MRIF). 

For more information:

• Federal Gas Tax Program
• Municipal Rural Infrastructure Fund (MRIF)
• Building Canada Fund - Communities Component (BCF-CC)