Going green: Solar panels added to Buffalo Pound’s $325 million renewal

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BUFFALO POUND — Rows of new solar panels will soon come online at the Buffalo Pound Water Treatment Plant after the unveiling this week of new elements included in a major overhaul of the facility.

With the $4 million solar project now complete, the panels line the entrance to the processing plant near Moose Jaw and are expected to be operational by the end of this month.

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Board member Patricia Warsaba, who spoke at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday, called the addition “a very exciting” and “important step the company is taking in reducing its carbon footprint.” .

“While this represents a small portion of the energy consumed by the plant, it is an important milestone and we anticipate it will lead to the expansion of new green energy projects in the future” , said Warsaba, flanked by Moose Jaw Mayor Clive Tolley and the Mayor of Moose Jaw. Regina Mayor Sandra Masters, whose cities share co-ownership of the Buffalo Pound plant.

“This is an important goal that we continue to work on in terms of using alternative energy sources to save money and reduce emissions,” Masters said.

The panels are expected to produce 1,800 kilowatts of electricity, which will flow on a self-sustaining grid.

President and CEO Ryan Johnson said the wattage is equivalent to about 400 homes and about 10 percent of the plant’s total annual electricity consumption, which is what is expected of the new administrative building of the power plant, which is also part of the renewal.

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“We wanted it to be a green building, so the intention was to produce at least enough electricity to cover that,” Johnson said during a tour Tuesday.

It is expected that Buffalo Pound will recoup the cost of the solar installation in 15 years through reduced electricity costs.

The addition of solar generation is just one of many elements of a major restoration project that began in 2022 and has surpassed 50% completion.

Over the past two years, teams have worked to enlarge and deepen the lagoons, upgrade pumps and add new clarification, filtration and treatment systems. Some new technologies are already being gradually implemented, such as the move to dissolved air flotation as a clarification process.

Much of the work involves adding operational capacity and stability, as well as increasing the flexibility to allow delivery to continue in the event that some systems go offline.

Johnson said the improvements will extend the plant’s life by another 25 to 30 years.

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“If something goes wrong, we have to fix it and we might not produce water. In the new plant, we can work around what’s wrong,” Johnson said. “These are the things that help us sleep at night.”

Water service has continued as usual throughout the project, with minimal disruptions as crews work to upgrade the infrastructure. Johnson said older systems, some installed in the 1960s, were more “fragile” than expected.

“We have been careful in how we do things,” he added.

A bright yellow tower crane still overlooks the facility, but Johnson predicts it will be gone by the end of 2025, once construction is complete. A ribbon-cutting ceremony is planned for spring 2026.

For Regina, future work beyond this goal will include the addition of fluoride, as approved by council in 2021, and orthophosphate to mitigate lead exposure from pipes or service connections.

Buffalo Pound is also working with a University of Regina researcher to find a marketable use for the 7,500 tonnes of sludge byproduct produced during the clarification process.

The sludge is currently disposed of in the Moose Jaw landfill at a cost of about $1 million a year, but research plans to turn it into a ceramic-like product that can be reused and made into fertilizer. If successful, Johnson said it could move from being an expense to becoming an “important” line of business for the plant.

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Buffalo Pound was built in 1955 and last upgraded to this scale in the 1980s. The total cost of the current project is $325 million, funded jointly by the federal, provincial and two municipal governments.

The City of Regina has agreed to commit up to $100.7 million.

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