One of the concerns we hear about for municipal politics is a lack of long-term planning.
Sure, we’ve seen them release capital spending plans for five years and beyond, but people are often wanting more.
City council has done a good job of looking ahead to 2030 and the planned phase-out of conventional coal power. They’re talking to people and looking for solutions. In the world of economic development, these things often move as quickly as a tectonic plate.
And you definitely can’t fault them for a lack of planning when it comes to the future of our wastewater treatment plant.
As it turns out, the wastewater treatment plant is one of the many facets of our community that would be negatively affected by a shutdown of the Shand Power Station in 2030. As part a longstanding agreement, the plant takes the effluent from the wastewater treatment plant and uses it for boiler feed water. Without that pact, the effluent would be released into the Souris River. Needless to say, the standards for releasing into the Souris River would be a lot more stringent than boiler feed at Shand.
This is not something the city could have waited until 2026 or 2027 to start investigating. It needed time to find the options, study the alternatives, determine the best choices available and ascertain the costs. And as you would expect, this is going to be expensive.
The first steps in this process started nearly two years ago. Give them credit for not waiting to see if we get a change in government and how that would change environmental policy.
Even if Shand were to be converted to a natural gas plant, it might not take as much effluent as it does now.
There’s a lot to unpack with this project. The initial report released at last week’s meeting of Estevan city council is more than 60 pages in length. If you’ve got nothing to do for a few hours one night or on a lazy Sunday afternoon (if such a thing exists) take a look at the document and give it some thought.
And if even wastewater treatment doesn’t turn your crank, this is absolutely one of those times in which people have to be informed about what needs to be done and why this is happening. It’s not just good enough to rely on conjecture, preconceived notions and what was said on coffee row.
And keep in mind this situation isn’t the city’s fault. The contract with SaskPower dates back to when the wastewater treatment plant first opened in 1996. Those who signed the deal probably thought that Shand, and coal-fired power, would be around much longer than 2030, and they were still probably hoping for Shand 2 to be constructed.
Now, thanks to changing government regulations and an unwillingness to invest in additional carbon capture and storage technology, Shand might be offline at the end of the decade.
It’s imperative for the different levels of government to come to the table with big funding for this project. They’re the reason we’re having this discussion. They’re the ones that have painted the city into a corner on this issue. They’re the ones whose decisions have forced the city to look at dramatic changes to one of its essential facilities.
The city has done a good job of paying down its long-term debt for about a decade now, but if it had to forge ahead with this project on its own, then it would require a substantial amount of debt, even for the more affordable, preferred option.
You hope that if the city decides to go with its preferred option, that it would work in Saskatchewan. In a time of economic uncertainty for our area, a mammoth expense for the wastewater treatment plant and higher utility rates for maintenance and operations is not what we need.
