NORTH WEST RIVER, N.L. — Water woes are nothing new to North West River, but hopefully those concerns will lessen.
The town just got itself a new pump house and upgraded water system and Mayor Dave Kieser feels it’s a big step forward.
“I was glad to see this finished,” he told the Voice. “The old pump house needed to be replaced. Some of the electrical was corroding and we couldn’t replace the parts, they just weren’t being made anymore.”
He said the project cost $1.2 million and was mostly funded through the province's capital works program. The structure was built last year, he said, and they had to wait to hook up the lines, which they did June 12.
It’s all state-of-the-art equipment, Kieser said, and will require far less maintenance than before.
The town has been looking at upgrading the sewer system for a few years and Kieser said they are currently weighing options.
“We have been measuring outfall and sending samples to the federal government,” he said. “We have been monitoring our outfall and we are consistently over the 100 cubic metres per day threshold. We have to continue monitoring that.”
He said treatment of the sewage has to be done, because of the volume produced by the town. They have applied for provincial funding to find out the costs associated with four different options they’re looking at.
One option is working with the neighbouring community of Sheshatshiu, but Keiser said until they find out the cost of all the options, nothing is set in stone.
