February 11, 2010

R.V. ANDERSON ASSOCIATES LTD.

After an assessment of the plant in 2006 by R.V. Anderson Associates Ltd., the city contracted the company to oversee an upgrade of the existing filter system and clarifiers.

FOCUS | Water & wastewater

Bathurst, New Brunswick treatment plant upgrade a wise decision

PETER KENTER

correspondent

When the city of Bathurst, N.B. engaged in an upgrade of its water treatment plant in 2006, it put into place systems that could accommodate a tripling of the plant’s treatment capacity.

That decision worked in the city’s favour as it chose to do just that in 2009.

The city obtains its water primarily from the nearby Middle River. As a protected watershed, the water is already of high quality as it enters the city. Water flows by gravity to two open-air reservoirs. The Upper Reservoir has a storage capacity of 44 million litres and the Lower Reservoir can hold 180 million litres.

The water is treated through a series of clarifiers and filters, then chlorinated and stored in an underground clear well before being pumped into the city’s distribution system. The system serves the needs not only of the City of Bathurst, but its customers which include the neighbouring Town of Beresford.

“It’s a challenging system to maintain, because although we only have 12,800 people, the city covers a large geographical area about the size of the City of Moncton,” says Bathurst mayor Stephen Brunet. “I live close to the water treatment plant and before the first plant upgrades were made, I had to install a pressure reducing valve to avoid blowing the nozzle off the garden hose.

“A few years back, we saw that the old technology had reached its limits.

“We were even having trouble sourcing parts for some of the older equipment. We pride ourselves on providing good tasting water to our customers, and we wanted to maintain that quality.”

After an assessment of the plant in 2006 by R.V. Anderson Associates Limited, the city contracted the company to oversee an upgrade of the existing filter system and clarifiers, installation of a new low-lift pump and variable frequency drive, conversion of the plant’s valves to electronic actuation, and installation of a new supervisory control and data acquisition system.

The $1.3 million construction contract was awarded to New Brunswick’s Design Built Mechanical Inc.

“When we worked on the original upgrade project, we had always envisioned that we would be adding future capacity in the pumps and the piping so that it would be easier to expand operations in the future,” says John Gallant, project manager, with R.V. Anderson.

The opportunity arrived sooner than expected with the approval of an application to the Building Canada Fund in 2009. The city received a federal grant of $1.3 million and a matching provincial grant toward a $4 million expansion of the system. This expansion would see the plant’s processing capacity almost triple to about 41 million litres per day.

R.V. Anderson was contracted to oversee the 2009 expansion project, which includes demolition of a clarifier constructed in 1977, and installation of a new clarifier with greater capacity, as well as construction of new filters, a filter building, and associated piping and valving. The construction contract will be tendered in March.

“One of the challenges on this project is to keep the plant operational while we work on the upgrades,” says Gallant.

“We have to keep the old system online while we’re integrating the new one. We advised the city to pre-purchase the clarifier equipment, not only to lock in prices, but also to save on the five to eight weeks of delivery time. We looked at various scenarios and cost projections including the cost of treatment chemicals to choose the most suitable equipment, in this case a unit from Actiflo. City council just approved the purchase, so everything will be here when we need it.”

Gallant notes that the current project has been made much simpler by the city’s decision to plan for future expansion during the 2006 upgrade.

“I think the city of Bathurst has been forward thinking in anticipating a demand for a larger regional supply of good drinking water, and a proactive approach has helped them to make the expansion of their system more affordable,” says Gallant.

Plant construction is scheduled for completion by summer of this year.

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