WCW24

The City of Portage la Prairie, Water Treatment Plant supplies an average of 24 million litres per day to the City of Portage, three regional water systems, and to several local large food processing industries. Raw water is obtained from the Portage Reservoir, which is a small water impoundment on the Assiniboine River. This impoundment was created from the construction of a dam control structure on the Assiniboine River, which connects with the Red River in Winnipeg; and the creation of a flood control spillway structure named the Assiniboine River Diversion which directs water, in times of flood, into a man-made diversion channel running to Lake Manitoba. During the spring melt in 2023 the Assiniboine River provided the City of Portage la Prairie, Water Treatment Plant with a "perfect storm" of issues arising from its raw water intake. These problems reduced the volume of water available for treatment in the facility and resulted in temporary water curtailments for local industry. This session will detail from an operations perspective what the conditions were that led to this previously unseen problem, how the conditions affected the plant and distribution system, and how the facility's resilient staff overcame them. The presentation will conclude with a brief summary of future construction plans for the facility, highlighting the new intake structure.

John D'Or Prairie is the administrative center of Little Red River Cree Nation, located 125 km east of High Level, Alberta. The community Water Treatment Plant was completed in 2019. After a few years of operation, the existing groundwater supply wells were not achieving the anticipated yield, requiring supplementation from seasonally available surface water sources to keep up with peak raw water demands. This situation was escalated to an emergency in May 2023 when the Paskwa Wildfire (HWF-030) displaced approximately 1,700 persons from the neighbouring community of Fox Lake to John D'Or Prairie. To mitigate the risk of a raw water shortage, a permanent raw watermain to the Peace River was implemented, with temporary pumping measures over the winter of 2023-2024 and plans for a future permanent intake structure. The design and construction of the ~15-km watermain was completed in a timeline of less than 6 months. Other key elements of the project included upgrading the existing WTP membrane system to allow for the increased demand and switch from a groundwater raw water source to a surface water source and conversion of the process waste cell to a raw water storage cell. Unique considerations had to be made at the design and administration stages of this project to account for the remote work location and emergency basis of the project.