The Pembina Valley Water Co-op (PVWC) spent some time over the last year looking into the future.

Chief Executive Officer, Greg Archibald says they went through a consultation process with their 14 partner municipalities to understand what their future needs would be. He says through that, they came up with 5, 10, 15, and 20-year projections. At the time being, Archibald says they are putting their focus on the first five years.

The first thing to take place is two projects currently in the tendering process. Archibald says they will be installing a 14-inch pipeline between Morris and St. Jean, and also upgrading the water treatment plant at Morris to increase flow from 67 to 100 litres a second.

Archibald says they hope to award the tenders in April, with work getting underway shortly after. If all goes well, he says the pipeline and upgrades to the Morris water treatment plant should be complete by late fall.

Another big project coming out of the consultation process is to install a treated reservoir at Lettelier to hold 4 million litres.

A third project would be to upgrade the plant at Stephenfield. "Although we just built a new plant there, it's appearing that maybe we need some more water to support the Carman and Dufferin area. So whenever Carman would go ahead with their upgrade with their new reservoir, we would probably go ahead there at the same time."

The last project on the initial five-year-plan is an additional pipeline between the Roland reservoir and the Morden-Winkler corridor. "Currently we have a 6-inch line, which is not that big. Right now we are hoping to do that 4 years out, but we'll just have to see what happens with growth in the area."