The City of Weyburn will be a part of an ambitious project that seeks to bring water down from Diefenbaker Lake to the Qu’Appelle area and to Nickle Lake, said Mayor Marcel Roy.
The mayor attended a water summit in Regina where a project that first began many years ago may now be completed with a 10-year project that will bring water to southern Saskatchewan.
The first part of the project piped water from Diefenbaker Lake to Buffalo Pound in the 1970s, and then it was curtailed at that point.
The new discussions seek to extend the water from Buffalo Poud to Qu’Appelle in a second phase, and lastly southward down to the source of the Souris River to provide a water source to Nickle Lake, which is the City of Weyburn’s main water source.
The group of municipalities in this project will now be forming a steering committee, and Mayor Roy has submitted a formal request that Weyburn be a part of that committee to have a voice in how this project will proceed.
He said it will be a 10-year project at least, with two years to do the planning and engineering, and six to eight years for the construction of the water pipelines.
Asked if more studies will be required for this project to go ahead, Mayor Roy said, “No, they’ve done enough studies already, and it’s time to move forward on this.”
