Weyburn's water treatment plant superintendent is happy to see stringent new regulations coming into effect to govern the province's drinking water supplies.

Tom Williams said it will be a better and safer situation both for the public and for municipalities once the regulations come into full effect.

"People are much more aware of the quality of the water they're drinking. The more information they have access to, the more confidence they will have about the quality of the water they receive," he said.

He made the comments while explaining the upgrades currently underway at Weyburn's water treatment plant to meet the new provincial regulations being put in place by Saskatchewan Environment.

The regulations were put in place following the inquiry into the North Battleford water problems, and for the first time are legally enforceable; prior to the inquiry, said Williams, municipalities only operated under guidelines, under which municipalities would receive notices if something came to Environment's attention.

Environment originally wanted all municipalities to have this work done in the first six months of 2003, but they have now extended that deadline to the end of the year. One reason Weyburn is undergoing this upgrade right now is part of the plant has to be shut down while the work is done, said Williams, and the plant will be gearing up for the busy spring and summer season by April.

As part of the new regulations, Weyburn's plant will need its system of filtering water redone, with monitors installed on each of 10 filters to monitor the water's turbidity on a continuous basis. Before, the city's plant had a monitor on the overall volume of water leaving the 10 filters and going into storage or into the distribution system.

As Williams explained, right now each of the 10 filters are back-washed at different times to help clean them out. The suspended materials would then be picked up by the other nine filters, and the overall turbidity reading (which measures how much suspended materials are in the water) would show the city's water was within provincial guidelines.

As the monitors will now be on each of the 10 filters, the water will have to repiped, along with monitoring systems put in place. This work was approved by council at an estimated cost of $131,000, and should be done around the end of March or mid-April, said Williams. This work is part of the water utility budget, and so will not affect taxes.

Part of this work will be installation of particle counters, which goes above and beyond what the province is requiring right now. A particle counter gives a much more accurate real-time count of suspended particles than the turbidimeters which are currently being installed.

"Our ultimate goal is to ensure we never experience what has happened in Walkerton or North Battleford. This system will give us more accurate records of what each of the 10 filters are doing," said Williams, noting the particle counters are capable of spotting something as specific as the bacteria which caused the problems in North Battleford's water supply.

Part of the new regulations also is making the water treatment plant's ongoing records available for the public to see, said Williams. By July of 2005, Sask. Environment will also require all water treatment plant workers to be trained and certified as Class 3 operators. Currently, two of Weyburn's plant operators are at this level.