By Allan Bradbury
Staff Writer
In service since the 1980s, the Fort Frances water tower hasn’t seen this kind of heavy maintenance since its inauguration, but after the work is complete in the fall, it will be good to go for another 20 years or more.
Environmental Superintendent for the Town of Fort Frances Craig Miller says residents of Fort Frances should see no interruptions to their water service over the course of the next several months as the tower is drained and worked on.
“The contractor mobilised on site this week,” Miller said.
“They’re doing internal work to the tower right now. One of the things that needed to be brought up to standard was a ladder that lets you climb to the top of the water tower. That provides up to date fall arrest systems.”
Miller says while the tower helps provide pressure to the town’s water system, there shouldn’t be any issues with the tank empty.
“The water tower kind of does a few things for the town, one, obviously is water storage, then it doubles as fire protection for the town then the third part is it provides water pressure,” Miller said.
“The system pressure, under normal operation is provided by that water tower by just having the water up on top of the pedestal. So with it taken out of service, the water treatment plant has two more reservoirs underneath it underground and we’ll be using pumps from the water plant to sustain the system pressure.”
Once drained, there are several different things which will be addressed.
“Around the middle of May we will start, over the course of a few days, draining the water tank and emptying it and then isolating it from the rest of the water distribution system that will allow them to start working on the tank itself,” Miller said.
“That will allow them to start working on the tank itself. That will include some various repairs to both the tank itself and some of the hatchways and ladders that are inside the tank. There’s quite a bit of internal welding on the structure of the tank that needs to take place. They’re going to be replacing the coating inside that line the metal of the tank and same with the outside of the tank, that will be recoated as well.”
Residents will notice scaffolding and a shroud go up around the tower to protect the environment as the old coatings are removed by sandblasting.
“The project will involve fully enclosing the water tower in scaffolding and hoarding it in using tarping to protect the environment from removal and application of the new coatings,” Miller said.
“All of the antennas for Bell and Vianet and the fire department and airport communications will be relocated to the outside of the scaffold as it’s being put up.”
Service disruptions from the relocation of the antennas will be minimal as well.
Once completed this work should essentially keep the tower in service for another 20 years or more.
“The water tower was built in the mid 80s and then around 2012 there was sort of a light rehab done on the coatings,” Miller said.
“This will be considered a full overhaul of the water tower. This is really kind of a once every 30 or 40 year project. We are required by the Ministry of the Environment to inspect the water tower and we do that on a roughly five year basis. We’ve been tracking the degradation of the water tower since about 2017 so we’ve been planning for this project for a while now.”
The cost of the overhaul comes at a hefty $4.1 million but essentially once the work is done the town will have what amounts to a basically new water tower ready to go for another 20 years or more.
Once the scaffolds and hoarding are removed, the water tower will likely also have a new look. Miller says that part is not necessarily under his purview but town officials are working on what that will look like.
