A $70 million, three-phase regional Waste Water Treatment Plant for Winkler, Morden and the R.M of Stanley is making headway again after halting earlier this year.

The project was nearing shovel ready last July when the proposal for funding was seemingly lost by the Province.

With a nine month delay the project design was revisited. However, with $1.8 million from the federal government and $900,000 from the Province announced earlier this week through the Canadian Water and Wastewater Fund, the project is moving forward again.

Harder explains the funding will help cover the $3.6 million design and engineering phase, reducing the municipalities' portion.

"The feds are paying half, and the province is picking up 25 percent, and that leaves us with 25," Harder says. "For us as municipalities we're delighted to be able to participate this way otherwise it would cost us 33 cent dollars and now it's 25, so it's a win for us."

Once completed by the end of this year, the project will move to tender and seek approval for funding split three ways between the federal government, the Province and the three municipalities. If funding is secured, construction could begin early 2017.

"The project itself is still a three phase project," Harder explains. "It's dealing with the basic infrastructure for waste water treatment, it's dealing with the infrastructure tying in Schanzenfeld and Reinfeld with lines into this facility, and a separate plant for Morden."

The need for expanded waste water treatment came to a head in 2011 after an exceptionally rainy spring overloaded the Winkler's lagoon, causing the Province to temporarily put a limit on city growth, denying an application for a new residential subdivision.

It was decided the most economical way to proceed with the waste water treatment project was for Winkler and Stanley to establish a regional plant and Morden to have a decentralized facility. In the R.M. of Stanley, the Winkler plant would eventually service the Villages of Reinfeld and Schanzenfeld.

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