Sundre town council has instructed its administration to look into the possibility of the municipality selling the town's wastewater to oil and gas companies for use in fracturing operations in the region.During last week's governance committee meeting, Ron Baker, Sundre director of operations and a licensed petroleum technologist, made a presentation to council on Sundre's water usage and the potential for the municipality to divert its wastewater for fracking.ìAlberta Environment has said they are considering allowing the difference between how much (potable water) the town produces and how much the town treats to be the amount of wastewater we can sell,î said Baker.In 2010, the Town of Sundre put 484,277 cubic metres of water from its treatment plant into the distribution system. At the same time, the town treated 596,780 cubic metres of wastewater at its lagoon, which was eventually discharged into the Red Deer River.The difference of 112,503 cubic metres is the amount the province may allow to be sold for use in fracking, he said.Sundre currently sells treated water to anyone, including oil and gas companies, at $5.50 per cubic metre.Fracking is an increasingly common method of extracting oil from non-porous rocks such as shale.The technique sees water or other fluids pumped into a well at high pressure, breaking up the rock at the bottom of the borehole and allowing oil to flow into the cracks where it is extracted, he said.A typical fracking operation can use about 400,000 gallons of water or other fluid, he said.Sundre Mayor Annette Clews said selling the town's wastewater for use in fracking operations around the Sundre area would make sense on several levels.ìI've been encouraging and asking administration and council to look at this for more than a year,î said Clews. ìIt will be all-around beneficial. For one we won't be selling expensively treated potable water to the companies. And by using the wastewater we won't be putting contaminants such as hormones and chemicals back into the water system. That wastewater will be used for fracking instead of coming back into the drinking water.îExactly how much money Sundre could make by selling the wastewater remains to be determined, she said.ìThat's the next step is to investigate the business model and see what it would look like,î she said.Any plan to sell the wastewater would require the construction of a pumping facility at the current Sundre wastewater lagoon, she said.ìThat would be the infrastructure that we would require to load the water trucks to carry the water out,î she said. ìThe cost of building that will be part of the business model that we've asked administration to come up with.îThe town will also be investigating the possibility of forming partnerships on the venture, she said, noting that partnerships could conceivably include Mountain View County.Clews said she hopes administration will be able to come back with more information on the proposal early in the new year.ìI would like to see it as soon as possible because the fracking is picking up speed, there is more and more of it in the Sundre area, so the sooner we can get on it the better,î she said.Baker said his investigation into the possibility of Sundre selling wastewater for fracking will including discussions with area oil and gas companies, trucking companies, and Alberta Environment.It will be several months before he can report back to council on his findings, he said.ìI've got a lot to look at,î he said.Mountain View County Division 6 councillor Paddy Munro said he is in support of using wastewater instead of fresh water for fracking operations.ìI sure like that idea,î said Munro. ìWhen the fracking companies take completely potable, perfect fresh water and they mix it with very toxic chemicals and then inject it at very high pressure, every litre that they put down a hole is lost forever to the human environment.îMunro said oil and gas companies, not municipalities, should be paying for any infrastructure needed to make use of wastewater in fracking operations.ìIn my opinion, if industry wants this, industry has to pay. I don't understand why Sundre would have to pay or why Mountain View County would have to pay. Industry needs to pay,î he said.
