During Monday night’s City Council meeting, a tender for upgrades to the stoplogs at the Albert Douglas Dam was accepted from DMS Industrial Constructors. The project, which has a price tag of $552,000, will see numerous upgrades at the facility, including new steel stoplogs for each spillway bay and a new electrical hoist system. They will also be looking at the existing monorail system at the dam.
The Albert Douglas Dam is an integral part of the City of Weyburn’s water infrastructure, explained Director of Engineering Jennifer Wilkinson, despite not even being within the city limits. Instead, it helps control the waters at Nickle Lake.
“In years where we do have a lot of runoff and stuff, we will flow water out of it, and that actually improves our water quality, as well as we will just have more water than needed,” the engineer explained. The stoplogs are part of the gate system that controls the flow of the water.
The bids that came in for the project ranged from $552,000 to $12 million. The bids were evaluated by MPE Engineering, who had been retained by the city to inspect and review the existing stoplogs used in the spillway structure. While DMS Industrial was the lowest bid, they were found to have the capability of the work.
“It’s not a small-scale project as well as it is somewhat specialized,” Wilkinson said of the work and the associated costs. “It does require a lot of equipment to do this, so we did get a good number of bidders, which is good for us when we do have contractors bidding on it, but it does take a larger firm that can come in and do this work, and they will be more specialized in it.”
The work is expected to be completed before the winter, although no firm timelines have been announced at this time.