Buffalo Water Treatment Plant adds more filtration capacity as part of new facility

Improvements to the Buffalo Pound Water Treatment Plant are nearing completion. Sierra D’Souza Butts has the details.

As part of the Buffalo Pound Water Treatment Plant’s new facility, an array of additional filtration measures are being added.

The major plant, located between Regina and Moose Jaw, provides water to over 300,000 people.

After being pumped from Buffalo Pound Lake, which originates from Lake Diefenbaker, the water passes through the plant for processing.

“When we bring the water in, we remove the impurities. Through the first stages is removing what 95 per cent of the impurities, that is what we call primary,” explained Ryan Johnson, CEO and president of the Buffalo Pound Water Treatment Plant.

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As part of the primary stage includes a new component.

The new plant features a Dissolved Air Floatation (DAF) process which allows impurities from the lake water, known as sludge, rise to the top and makes them easier to remove.

“What that does is we add billions of billions a little microbubbles and they basically attach to all the impurities we want to get out of the water in the treatment process,” Johnson explained.

“Everything raises up to the top and then we will remove that sludge material off the top. From that then we will take the good water, which at that point is 95 per cent clean.”

From there, the water goes through the ozone and UV systems, along with other filters, to “destroy any organic material” that the previous stages missed.

“From there we add the chlorine just to make sure that if something happens to the water between here and the tap, that there’s enough chlorine in there to react with any contaminants that could get in the system, like if you had a water main break or a depressurization or something major,” Johnson added.

In addition to supplying water to people in Regina and Moose Jaw, the corporation also provides water to SaskWater and Buffalo Pound Provincial Park.

Johnson said having the water go through multiple stages helps ensure the water is safe and clean for consumption.

“We need to ensure that everything we do is the water is as safe as possible at all stages, and we use multivariate approach. [Where] watershed protection is number one and then in the plant we have the other barriers that we use to ensure that the water is treated to the best possible quality that we can get,” he added.

Although the new building still has some deficiency work to complete, the water treatment plant is currently operating. The remaining process is expected to finish by January 2027.