St. Stephen looking at costly 15-year water system overhaul

St. Stephen faces major decisions on its 120‑year‑old water system. Rory Pickard with the engineering firm of Dillon Consulting Ltd. presented a 19‑page strategic plan to the municipal district council on March 25 proposing a 15‑year program that would cost tens of millions of dollars to upgrade the system, which has served St. Stephen since 1906. The new mayor and council will have to pick up the file after province‑wide local elections set for Monday, May 11.

St. Stephen built its first water system, drawing from the St. Croix River, in 1886, but it was declared unfit in 1905 due to animal waste and a new pulp mill upstream, forcing the town to find a new source. Frank Barbour, an engineer from Saint John, designed the new system drawing from a shallow water aquifer adjacent to Dennis Stream at Maxwell Crossing, from where a dug well nine metres wide and nine metres deep has supplied St. Stephen ever since. For many years, Calais and the two Milltowns relied on this same water system.

It has held up, with some upgrades and maintenance, for three times its original 40‑year life expectancy. Barbour himself, according to the Dillon report, recommended in 1945 that the town twin the five‑kilometre transmission main from Maxwell Crossing to the Valley Road reservoir to the distribution system for redundancy. Every drop of water to come out of a tap in St. Stephen passes through this 400‑millimetre cast iron pipe, in service since 1906.

It has sprung leaks over the years and suffers from internal scaling and corrosion. If this pipe ever collapses, the reservoir on Todd Hill could supply the municipality for about a day and one‑half before it runs dry -- not nearly long enough to repair the break, St. Stephen's Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Sean Morton, who serves as fire chief and director of infrastructure, said at the March 25 meeting.

The municipality has a draft contingency plan on a desk in Fredericton awaiting provincial approval, Morton said. The municipality would draw water from the St. Croix River above tidewater, in the area of the Milltown border crossing, suitable for putting out fires and flushing toilets, according to Morton. A truck would have to bring in potable water so that townspeople could bring buckets for their daily allotments. "We really don't have a better option," Morton said, adding, "It's a big plan, but I hope we never have to implement it."

Dillon recommends, as interim measures, installing ultraviolet disinfection at the main well to kill chlorine‑resistant pathogens, and screening all wells against New Brunswick's current GUDI (Groundwater Under the Influence of Surface Water) protocol. Current drinking water standards mandate filtration for GUDI‑susceptible water sources as the only effective defence against chlorine‑resistant protozoa such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia, the Dillon report states.

St. Stephen last did a major audit on water leaks in 2002, according to Dillon. The municipality cannot accurately estimate unaccounted for water and "was operating with a fundamentally broken metering and billing system, where readings were frequently overridden." The municipality has stopped metering residential water, opting for a flat rate instead. Council voted on March 25 to set the fixed rate for this year at $190 per family unit per quarter, retroactive to January 1.

Dillon started working on this strategic plan following a meeting with municipal staff last June. The plan sets out a vision to provide St. Stephen with a "safe, reliable and financially responsible" water system for the next 100 years. It sets out four guiding principles of prioritizing public health, operational efficiency, proactive asset management and financial sustainability.

Pickard set out a plan to implement these goals in three phases between 2026 and 2041. The first phase would be "heavy on engineering," including determining whether the Maxwell Crossing aquifer can provide adequate water or if St. Stephen should look elsewhere. The second phase would involve capital spending for new wells, possibly in the same aquifer, treatment facilities, twinning the transmission main, upgrades to the Todd Hill reservoir and other work. "This is tens of millions of dollars. It's going to be capital intensive, and it's the longest portion of the plan," Pickard said. The final phase would involve long‑term operational and capital planning "that will set the stage for a sustainable future for the system," he said.

Dillon urges St. Stephen to consolidate information and data on its water system -- old paper drawings in different offices and in various electronic formats on different computer systems that do not "talk" to each other -- into a single easy‑to‑use system.

St. Stephen might continue drawing its water from the Maxwell Crossing aquifer but well No. 1, with a mortarless stone foundation and brick walls with an open gravel bottom, and a concrete cover/roof above the ground surface, would be decommissioned. Dillon recommends drilling four new wells in the aquifer, each with a sustained capacity of 400 gallons a minute. The engineering firm also recommends redevelopment or replacement of two other wells drilled at later dates that no longer produce as much water as they first did.

Councillor Brian Cornish said that ending the agreement to sell water to Calais decades ago "bought us some time" but that time is up. Councillor Joyce Wright said she is "ready to rumble on this."

The Dillon report is available on the municipal website attached to the agenda for March 25 council meeting.