Submitted by Will Arscott 

 

 

It was a regular speaker format meeting at the William Pascoe Room of the Bessborough. We continued our new practice of asking members to chair. This meeting we were honoured to have Mike Giesbrecht conduct the meeting. The turnout was small even by June standards but enthusiastic.

Greeter  was President Paul Gauthier

Cashier was Clare Heagy

Visitors and Guests were introduced by Vic Dubois

Rotary Grace was sung

Set-up  and take down  by Al Morton

Without Wayne M leading our O Canada was a little more anemic than usual.

 

Visitors and Guests included only our guest speaker who was introduced later in the meeting.

 

Announcements - President Paul

 

It appears that our members either don’t possess or had forgotten about the call for books suitable for Grade I to III readers. The books were to support the Saskatoon Public Schools Foundation Summer Reading Project.

 

Fees for the upcoming Rotary year are due. If you want the discount they must be in by June 15^th (Or I believe your payment will be accepted with the discount at the Board Meeting on Monday June 17^th). Members were sent the renewal form in an email. You can complete with the renewal with your credit card info and scan or fax to Wayne Palmer. Wayne did a brisk business during the meeting receiving fees for the year.

 

There will be a regular meeting of the Board of Directors on Monday June 17^th at the Saskatoon Club.

 

Vic Dubois reminded us of the President’s dinner coming up on Monday June 24^th. This is an evening meeting at the Saskatoon Club. The reception starts at 5:30 with dinner to follow. The cost is $60 with spouses and friends welcome. You can pay ahead or at the meeting but please let Vic know by early next week so he can provide numbers to the Saskatoon Club. It should be a good time.

 

Ahhh!! Summer is upon us and there are fewer announcements than when our year is in full swing.

 

 

 

H         Jack Brodsky for attending the dinner in Regina where Don Atchinson received the Saskatchewan Order of Merit (SOM). This is well deserved recognition for Don who is a past mayor and a honorary member of our club.

 

3H       Dave Sundby for a three fish (Pickerel) Saturday. Unfortunately a sad dollar for his fishing partner who was not as successful. Also happy for attending another very successful Lobsterfest put on by the Meewasin Rotary Club. (He even got to coach a friend through their first whole lobster.)

 

H         Mike LeClaire for a 50^th anniversary.

 

H         Will Arscott for the lifting of the forest fire danger at High Level Alberta. Will’s son is a power engineer at Norbord which is the main employer in High Level. He was the shift engineer in charge in the main control room when the order to shut down and evacuate came through. They immediately lost power and had to run shut-down from an emergency diesel generator. This is something they practice for but hope they never have to do in real life. He will now have it on his resume.

 

H         Mike Giesbrecht for the success of his son’s baseball season and for Mike not being seriously hurt when he was struck by an errant bat.

 

All in all we were a pretty happy bunch this year.

 

ROTARY OCCUPATIONAL TALK was given by Wendy Cooper

 

Wendy is one of our newer members being inducted into the club at our Christmas Meeting.   Wendy works as a financial planner with Freedom 55 Financial. I believe she may have met Gary Rusu along the way.

 

Wendy is a Saskatchewan girl through and through having been born in Meadow Lake and lived in several places in rural Saskatchewan as a result of her father’s job as a grain elevator operator.  She has three grown children. The daughters have careers as a speech therapist and an occupational therapist. Her son is a movie and video producer whose career is less secure than the daughters. Wendy reports he is happy and doing what he wants.

 

For much of the time while her family was growing Wendy was a stay at home mom.   Once the children were older she started to look for a career. She worked in fund-raising for the Children’s Hospital but did not like the amount of time away from home traveling through the province.          

 

When the opportunity to join Freedom 55 came along it seemed a good fit. Wendy is very happy with her decision to pursue this path. Above all else, she enjoys working with people. She sees her job to be helping them to define their goals and then develop plans to meet them. She now has a partner and is operating under the name Terra Financial. Like Gary (and most of us in this industry) she has no plans to retire as long as her health and energy continue.

 

When not working Wendy and her husband are fans of most sports.

 

 

 

Rob is an engineer and has been employed by the city of Saskatoon water department since 2009.  Originally he worked on large projects such as the upgrade of the main plant and the reservoirs.  He is now operations manager of the whole system.

 

The title of his talk was ‘Trends in Saskatoon Water Usage’. This is a particularly apt subject with the dry spring we have experienced.

 

Saskatoon water service dates from 1906. It is a conventional water treatment service. The water is drawn out of the South Saskatchewan River. As it exists now, there are several processes to remove particulate. It is treated both with UV and chlorinated to remove biological agents.   Finally it is softened (a little) with calcium. The service now serves about 300,000 people and is developing plans to serve at least 500,000. This new number will require significant infrastructure investment.

 

Rob briefly put up the schematic for the overall system. It is quite complex and we were relieved he did not try to go through it in detail. The plant consists of the main treatment plan at Ave H and 11^th street as well as two reservoirs. There are reservoirs on 43^rd Street and at Taylor and Acadia Drives. These create one unified system with each of the three parts serving a certain area and the three parts connected and able to draw from one another. It is worth noting that the reservoir at Taylor and Acadia is at a much higher elevation than the other two components and the area of the city it serves has higher water pressure as a result. When water is taken from the Acadian reservoir back into the system, valves are used to decrease the pressure as the other areas are not built for the extra pressure.

 

The seasonal nature of Saskatoon creates very different water need profiles summer and winter.   Winter use is about 50% of summer use. Much less water is used in the winter. Overall about 58% of use is commercial and 42% is residential. Residential sprinklers are a major load in the summer months.

 

Indoor water use is down in Saskatoon about 16% since 2000. At times in the 1990s water use was over 200 gallons per day per residence. Now it is down to about 140 and Rob believes 95 will come. There are many factors: More water efficient toilets and other appliances are being installed. New developments use more efficient appliances. With the move to smaller yards and condo developments there is less watering per capita. There has also been changes in attitudes towards water usage. The gains will slow as more of the less efficient appliances and toilets are replaced. Of indoor use the breakdown runs: Toilets 24%; Faucets 20%; Shower 20%;

Washers 16%; Leakage 14%. Some uses are so efficient that they have little effect. Modern dishwashers use little water and recycle the water they use, as a result they are not a major use of water.

 

Since the 1990s Saskatoon has been growing quickly but water use has fallen. The high in the 1990s was 700L/person/day, now it is 400L/person/day. The maximum total daily use was 240,000L in 2009. We are now down from that number. The existing system can provide about 250,000 L per day.

 

As the population grows water use will start to grow. The current plant will not serve a city of 500,000. That population will require another major upgrade to the central plant and two or three additional reservoirs. This will require significant capital investment.

 

The current plant could be stretched by an extended period of low rain and high heat (2019?).  

 

Saskatoon still has significant room to increase in draw from the river under the river basin management agreements. Overall about 80% of the water drawn is treated and returned to the river. There is reason to believe that this proportion could be increased in the future. Watering is the problem because of the loss to evaporation but other uses can be made highly efficient at returning the water they use.

 

Following Rob’s talk there was a time for questions. The editor will not try to summarize in general but here are some of the interesting parts:

 

-           Saskatoon is not anywhere near using its full allotment from the river. If we ever reach that limit there is no immediate secondary source. The best possibility would be an intake on the North Saskatchewan with a pipeline to the city and likely a secondary treatment plant. This was costed out some years ago at $500 million.

 

-           There is technology and the plant already has some capacity to deal with intake water that has been polluted with hydro-carbons (oil). An oil spill in the South Saskatchewan River would likely be a manageable event.

 

-           Rob thinks there is no general reason city water should be further filtered or treated in your house. Saskatoon has a Level IV treatment plant. This puts us in the top group in the province. Our water is quite potable. You may wish to further soften the water but this is a personal choice.

 

Rob was thanked by Mike Giesbrecht and the usual donation will be made to Bethany Homes in his name.

 

Adjournment