By Cori Lee Miller
The Eagle
After living under a boil water advisory since the 1970s, Bragg Creek residents are getting closer to obtaining a steady supply of clean, drinkable water.
Sitting on gravel and sand, effluent from septic fields is believed to have leached into the soil around the hamlet, contaminating groundwater as well as affecting wells and the Elbow River.
The Municipal District of Rocky View has plans to build a water treatment plant in a grader shed located in an M.D.-owned lot on Burnside Drive.
Derek Lovlin, Rocky View’s director of infrastructure and operations, said the project is off to a good start.
The M.D. recently received $2.7 million from the provincial and federal governments through the communities component of the Canada-Alberta Building Canada Fund.
Working with a budget of $6.8 million, Lovlin said the extra money will allow the M.D. “to contemplate what we would have perceived as future phases,” such as piping water into commercial spaces.
“That will allow us to look at the funding we had already set aside and do some other work as well.”
The M.D. plans to build the $4.1 million water treatment plant as the first phase of the project. A potable water storage tank and truck fill station will be located next to the treatment plant.
Intake for the plant will be on the south side of the Elbow River, using the M.D.’s right-of-way, bordering the Tsuu T’ina First Nation, which has submitted a letter of concern to the M.D regarding the project. A Tsuu T’ina representative did not return phone calls.
Lovlin said Rocky View will be in talks with the Tsuu T’ina First Nation in June.
Once the plant is built the M.D. estimates it will have five water trucks available during business hours to service Bragg Creek residents.
For residents “there will be a cost for the water and the trucking,” said Lovlin.
Waste systems in the hamlet will remain as they currently are.
Bragg Creek resident Brett Gilmour, who has been living in the hamlet since 2007, currently buys bottled water and has a well on his property.
Living near the site of the proposed water treatment plant, Gilmour said he has concerns about the truck traffic and the noise created by the plant.
He said the hamlet’s narrow roads and residential areas would make it difficult for trucks to navigate and safely transport water.
“That road is not designed to have trucks on it,” he said. “They’d be breaking their own laws in order to do that.”
Gilmour said the hamlet currently has 70 water trucks pass though it a week, and he wasn’t sure the 35 trucks that would be working a week under the M.D.’s plan could meet the demand.
“At some point, who knows when, a truck would show up and bring potable water to our house,” he said.
The resident said he wants the water treatment plant, but would prefer if the M.D. installed a pipeline to the community centre or mall and “put water delivery to the trucks” at one of these locations.
Gilmour said he was also told at an open house approximately a year ago that residents would be required to tap into the main water line once it has been built at a minimum cost of $50,000, to the homeowner.
“They said you wouldn’t have the option, you would be required to connect.”
Lovlin said policies are not yet in place to govern how access to the water will work.
“We’re not about to force anything on anybody out there without some sort of discussion and consultation to what this might mean for the community,” he said.
Lovelin said no concrete date for construction has been set yet, but the project would begin this year.
Alberta Environment notified the M.D. on May 26 that it would require more detailed information on its application. Rocky View is currently waiting for approval on a Water Act license allocation transfer, approval to construct an infiltration gallery, and Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act approval to construct and operate the plant.
Alberta Environment asked the M.D. for justification on the volume of water it is requesting from the Elbow River, as well as for more detailed information on schedules for water delivery, storage, delivery locations and how water will be returned to the river.
Environment Alberta spokeswoman Cara Van Marck said they try to work through applications as quickly as possible, and do notify downstream users and landowners in the area.
“So if there’s any impacts to downstream users, landowners in the area then their concerns are addressed.”