The TNRD’s Director of Environmental Services says the regional district will do an engineering study on a new water treatment system for about 250 residents of Vavenby this year.

Jake Devlin says that work is needed before the TNRD can apply for grant funding to build the facility at the site of the old Canfor mill.

“That type of work will identify the specific scope, cost and location of the infrastructure and that really is the homework that we need to do so that we are prepared to make applications for future grant funding programs when they become available from the provincial and federal levels of government,” he told NL News.

“As is the case with many of these small systems that pull water from surface sources, those intakes typically do not currently include filtration which is the critical step to meet guidelines for Canadian drinking water quality so that is certainly our objective for all the small water systems owned by the regional district.”

As for what it could cost to build this new water system, Devlin says that is among the things the study will try to estimate.

“I can safely say it would be in the millions of dollars range but I can’t give you a specific number,” he said. “That’s exactly the type of homework that we need to do so when we do submit a grant application, that we have the background and accurate engineering information behind it to provide the details to the province and the feds.”

The land was donated to the TNRD by the new owner of the mill-site, Brian Fehr, without which Devlin says they would have had to buy land to build the new water treatment facility.

The former Canfor Mill in Vavenby was put for sale in the summer of 2019 when the corporation closed it down. It was the largest employer in the North Thompson at the time, employing more than 170 people.