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Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Issue 42
SERVING THE ENERGY CITY SINCE 1903
www.estevanmercury.ca
Mailing No. 10769 | Publication No. 40069240
Council approves intake project tender By David Willberg dwillberg@estevanmercury.ca
The City of Estevan is going to proceed with the water intake project that will shift the city’s primary water source from Boundary Dam to Rafferty Dam. Estevan city council awarded the tender for Phase 1 of the intake project to GCS Energy for $2,768,083 during Monday night’s meeting. Shane Bucsis, the manager of the water treatment plant and wastewater treatment plant, said the intake project is going to be completed in three phases. Phase 1 will be for the hookup inside the water treatment plant for the pipeline that will carry the water from Rafferty Dam, along with the construction of 6.2 kilometres of pipeline. The 6.2 kilometres of pipeline marks the most work the city felt they’d be able to complete within the approved environmental assessment timeline for this winter season. Phase 2 will be the construction of the structure for the pump house and the raw water intake, and Phase 3 will be completion of the pipeline to the new intake structure. The city decided to break the project up into three phases after the tenders for the project came in significantly over budget last year. The city would have had to cover the cost of the additional $7 million to get the project complete, since the money from the provincial and federal governments would not cover the budget overages. “We went back, and with the engineers, we took a look at the project to see how we could make it cheaper,” said Bucsis. Breaking it up into three different phases is expected to make a big difference, he said, because it will allow additional
Shane Bucsis companies to bid on the work. And reducing the size of the pipe from 600 millimetres to 500 millimetres is also expected to reduce costs. The price last year was $255 per metre for the pipe, but now it will be $242 per metre. Reducing the pipe size is not expected to affect water supply, either. “For flow wise, in the long-term, the pipeline at 600 millimetres would have been the long-term for 40 years,” said Bucsis. “By dropping it down, we lower the growth curves for 30-35 years.” Bucsis pointed out that those numbers for the life cycle of the pipe came from 2011, when Estevan was going through a surge in population. Now that the boom is over, the demand for raw water has levelled out, and he anticipates the life expectancy should be 40 years. Phase 2 and Phase 3 will also be retendered. Councillor Greg Hoffort wanted to know if the next two phases will have cost estimates as well. “The question is, how do we feel, based on seeing this, that the overall project cost is coming in,” said Hoffort. The cost for Phase 1 is A2 » COSTS
Gym babies Little Cash Goudy, who attended the Gym Babies development group at the Estevan Family Resource Centre with his mom Crystal, enjoyed dancing and singing the Tick Tock Cuckoo Clock song. Photo by Anastasiia Bykhovskaia
Police chief: It’s not a surprise to see a rise in break and enters By Ana Bykhovskaia abykhovskaia@estevanmercury.ca
Estevan is experiencing a wave of thefts, break and enters and frauds. Anything from golf clubs to pickup trucks and industrial equipment has disappeared. Estevan Police Service (EPS) Chief Paul Ladouceur talked about the main reason behind this problem. “ W hen the economy starts to suffer we tend to see some of the property crimes increase. There is a lot of correlation between the economy and some of the calls for service that we predominantly deal with.” It’s quite common to see crime rates going up when the
economy falls into a nosedive. The decrease in the amount of cash in people’s pockets comes along with an increase in domestic disputes, impaired driving, increased drug use and of course thefts and break and enters and other types of property crime cases. “ When the money is not there people are looking into other means of obtaining cash. Some of those people, unfortunately, turn towards criminal activity to do that,” said Ladouceur. Crisis times are especially tricky for people who have drug or alcohol addictions. Usually, they can support their habits while working, but if suddenly their shifts are cut or they are no longer employed,
all hell breaks loose for them. “Sometimes what we see is people turn to thefts or break and enters or, worst case scenario, even robberies to gain cash to support those habits,” said Ladouceur. So it’s not a surprise to see new break and enters happening in Estevan. In past months Estevan has experienced everything from break and enters, break and enters with commit and an indictable offence, thefts over $5,000 and thefts under $5,000. There are also a number of charges that can go along with that, such as possession of stolen property, public mischief, fraud, obstruction during the course of the arrest and more. Thefts
over $5,000 were more common and usually involved larger items or vehicles. Fortunately, EPS could clear many of those cases quite fast and returned the property to owners. “Often times it’s a small group of people that commit the majority of these incidents, so when we can identify these individuals and bring them to justice then we see those numbers start to drop,” said Ladouceur. And that was the case with the break and enter at the Wicklow Centre. The parties have been arrested and charged and numerous pieces that were stolen on different occasions, were recovered. A2 » PUBLIC
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