The City of Revelstoke is set to officially take control of the Big Eddy Waterworks on October 1.
Big Eddy residents supported handing over their water system in February, and work has been ongoing since then to put the vote in action.
The move means the city can begin work on an estimated $5.6 million in upgrades needed to bring the network up to both Interior Health water quality standards and city fire flow regulations.
“On the engineering side, the city has been helping the Big Eddy out with some minor things,” said Mike Thomas, the city’s director of engineering. “We’ve started a little bit of work out there.”
So far, the work has centred on data collection. The city installed SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) equipment in order to monitor the pumps and wells in the system.
“It gives us an idea of how often the pumps are running and how they’re running,” said Thomas. “This is equipment that previously wasn’t there.”
The city is also looking at using it to monitor the reservoir, he added.
The system can also be used to control the network.
“It’s not just data collection, it’s also the ability to change values, change pump runs and close valves,” said Thomas.
The next project will be to modify the pipes running to and from the reservoir. Right now, there are two pipes connected to the reservoir. They are either used to send water to the reservoir from the wells, or to the network from the reservoir.
The work will make it so one pipe is dedicated to filling the reservoir while the other sends water out to the Big Eddy. “We’re working on the design of that,” said Thomas.
A hitch is that the work may involve digging in an archaeologically sensitive area, so the city will need a permit to do the work.
The major work will involve an overhaul of the water lines through the Big Eddy. Thomas said the city will prepare a request for proposal in order to hire an engineering firm to do the design work.
The city will re-visit the phasing plan for the work to go over what projects should be done when.
“There were a lot of comments about what work should be done first,” said Thomas.