An abundance of safe and secure water flows into Selkirk homes and businesses thanks to the city’s commitment to asset management that over the years has seen investment into new wells, monitoring and maintenance of those wells, water and sewer relining, sewer separation and trenchless technology, to name a few.
Raven Sharma, the city’s Utilities Manager, says investments into Selkirk’s water and wastewater infrastructure are paying off in a big way for the city, its citizens, and the environment.
“Selkirk has made tremendous improvements in its water and wastewater utilities, including our state-of-the-art regional wastewater treatment facility that opened in 2021 and is fulfilling its role as a centre of excellence,” Sharma said.
“But investments in wells for city drinking water, monitoring our wells to ensure quantity and quality, and even the city’s move to trenchless technology for putting in and repairing underground pipes is making the city more environmentally and financially responsible.”
The regional wastewater treatment facility makes use of the best technology there is to turn wastewater from a pollutant responsible for deteriorating the water quality and plant life of the Red River and Lake Winnipeg into water that is not only potentially suitable for consumption but can be reused for several practical purposes, as we call “rewater”.
The facility is a centre of excellence and the city has industry partners who are there optimizing it. As well, Sharma’s vision of the facility as the province’s ‘hub of sludge’ is becoming a reality. The city has built a sludge, or biosolid, dewatering bed that turns biosolids created during the treatment of wastewater into a product that can be used for fertilizer.
“We take biosolids from all the cells and put them onto this bed, and let photosynthesis, natural sunlight that we have for six months of the year, dewater it on its own. In 2023, the city bought a biosolid dewatering pump and geo bags and now what we’re doing is we’re filling these bags up, and you can eventually use it for fertilizer,” Sharma said.
“In the future, we would love to explore the possibility of taking biosolids from other municipalities because there’s a huge problem with what to do with your biosolids in Manitoba. If they could haul it here, we could eventually turn it into fertilizer and potentially start selling it.”
Sharma has been working with the University of Manitoba and Red River College on a biosolid project and there’s exciting news on that front – a student from RRC has found a way to use wastewater biosolids and lime dewatering biosolids in the making of Quick Crete.
The project, titled ‘Sustainable Concrete Materials – Lime Sludge in Engineering Applications Summary’ looks at the compressive strength of concrete made with varying percentages of lime sludge incorporated as a cement replacement. The raw lime sludge was taken from The City of Selkirk’s Water Treatment Plant and the concrete mixes were designed to meet the specifications of Type 2 concrete listed in the City of Winnipeg Specification CW 3310.
Selkirk’s water is well
The city’s Community Strategic Plan, Priority 3 – Safe and Sustainable Infrastructure, calls for the city to have a reliable water source.
The forward thinking began in 2011 when the city expanded its water treatment plant. In 2016 Selkirk partnered with the Manitoba Water Services Board (MWSB) on an investment of $2.5 million and drilled two supplemental wells in the RM of St. Andrews to complement the four wells in Selkirk that were already serving the city. An 11 km pipeline was built – Selkirk’s version of the Winnipeg –Shoal Lake aqueduct – and carries the water to Selkirk.
The city’s Environmental Act License for the additional wells and pipeline calls for the city to provide a monitoring report to the province every five years. The city upped that and has a contractor monitor the wells every year.
Sharma says the city was extremely proactive in its water monitoring and is almost unique in its approach to its water supply.
“Beyond the yearly monitoring, internally, the City of Selkirk staff go to every city well every week and we actually mark the static water level and I put it into a trend graph so we’re monitoring all the time,” Sharma said.
“We can pick the graph up and look at it over a month-long period and if we see a decline in the static water level, that indicates something with our draw down and we can investigate and look at our hydrology.”
Sharma says yearly monitoring is rare in other communities, and weekly is unheard of.
Saving dollars with better internal processes
New technology, called Neptune 360, alerts the city when something’s up with a customer’s water flow. It means problems can be detected and solved sooner.
“We upgraded our system in 2022, and the city gets an alarm when there’s intermittent flow, or continuous flow, that means there’s an anomaly, something’s going on and right away it’s a red flag. We get the trend and if, for example, someone’s water’s running continuously, that may mean they have a leak, that may mean they’re running their water because of a reason,” Sharma said.
“That prompts us now as an internal process to contact that resident and we will actually go there, physically take a water meter reading and do an investigation and inspection.”
It saves the customer money because if there’s a leak, it’s caught right away instead of them receiving a large water bill.
The city has also reduced the number of people on its ‘running water’ list by 50 per cent. The list exists, Sharma says, because in some older homes the underground pipes may not be buried deep enough and are prone to freezing The city now educates people on ways to winterize their home so they don’t have to leave a tap running.
“It’s an environmental improvement because it saves water and it saves the city money because it’s treated water that’s being wasted and it has to be treated again when it goes to the wastewater side,” Sharma said.
Trenchless technology
Selkirk’s use of trenchless technology is a great example of the city moving on from historical practices to save money and the environment. Sharma says they’ve been using trenchless technology for about four years now for the installation, replacement or renewal of underground utilities.
The new technology means no or minimal excavation and surface disruption and can be used for water mains, storm and sanitary sewers, gas mains, electrical and fiber optics conduits. Less excavation means less interruption to vehicular and pedestrian traffic in commercial and residential areas.
“Trenchless technology is less invasive, you don’t need to dig up the ground multiple times so then there’s less carbon emissions, less Greenhouse Gas,” said Sharma, who is the Vice Chair of the North American Society for Trenchless Technology’s Northwest Chapter.
“The city is always looking different ways of upgrading our mains and taking the environment into consideration.”
