Steps are being taken to address ongoing issues with the lagoon liners in Ardmore and Fort Kent.
The liners in the storage pods of both hamlets’ lagoon systems have been experiencing ballooning for a number of years, affecting how much space is available.
”There’s something underneath that’s pushing it up in certain spots,” explained MD CAO Luc Mercier. “It’s either air, some sort of gas, or water underneath. What it’s doing is kind of blowing up the rubber like a big balloon, and it’s restricting the amount of space that our lagoon has.”
In order to address the issue, MD of Bonnyville council awarded the engineering contract to Saskatoon-based BCL Engineering Ltd. for $149,000 during a committee meeting on June 19.
According to Abid Malik, general manager of infrastructure services, the problems began in 2011, just two years after the storage pods were built in 2009.
He believes an analysis should have been done at the time to see what was causing the issues, however, one wasn’t completed.
”The first part of the investigation is we’ll investigate the liner to see how much life is left, so we’ll send it for analysis,” he said. “If the liner is to be replaced in the next one or two years, then we might want to look into more (options), like a clay liner, other liners, or other options.”
