The Pembina Valley Water Co-op is continuing right where it left off in 2021, forging ahead to enhance the quality of water it provides, and ensure its member municipalities continue to have a secure supply of treated potable water going forward.

CEO, Greg Archibald, says 2021 was an extremely busy year for the Co-op. Upgrades were completed at the Stephenfield Lake, including an upgrade to the plant for additional capacity in order to supply water to the Town of Carman as a result of the town shutting down it's water treatment plant and putting in a new reservoir.

At the Morris Water Treatment Plant, a project to increase capacity for treatment was completed, and a 12 inch pipeline was also installed from the Roland Reservoir to the Boundary Trails Health Centre.

Currently, work is on-going on a new booster station north of Winkler. Archibald says that work will be complete by early March, and they will then be able to commission and start up that pipeline. At the same time, Archibald says they are doing some minor work around an additional inline booster by Boundary Trails that will allow them to get more flow over to Carman.

Archibald notes they also have some line work going on at Letellier with the new lime room, and they're also getting going on the design for all their other planned upgrades at the facility.

Meanwhile, the water co-op is also examining how it can pipe in more water from the Red River to its plant at Lettelier. Archibald says it's part of their process to try and mitigate any potential future drought issues. He said based on their learnings last year with the drought situation, they are changing the intake to a different location in the River.

"So it's required us to re-evaluate, re-look at it. We're working back with the engineering folks right now...The thought is we put it in a deep place that is identified by a bathymetrics study...Even if the Red River flow goes down to very low, we still have the elevation there, so our pumps and our intakes would still operate very well."