Swift Current city council has agreed to a pair of upgrades for the water treatment plant, but no difference in water quality will be experienced.

On Monday night council passed a few motions to approve just over $372,000 for an air scour system and new lamellas.

Mitch Minken, the general manager of infrastructure and operations for the City of Swift Current, said the two new pieces of equipment will be part of the actiflo chambers which are at the beginning of treatment line.

"As the water comes in from Duncairn and out of our reservoir it goes into the plant and this is the first step in the process which is all designed to remove the solids out of the water," he explained. "It's further clarified as it goes through the process."

The current actiflo chambers, which were built in 2013, are equipped with lamellas but because the chambers didn't have a cleaning system installed the lamellas had to be cleaned manually which damaged them.

"We get one contractor out here, this contractor can do both jobs, put the air scour system in, replace the lamellas, and then we will be good," Minken said. "Then those lamellas will be good for the ages going forward because with the air scour system they won't be subject to the damage from the cleaning. The other great advantage of this is we will be able to turn around the cleaning time much quicker than manually."

Both the products will be installed sometime this winter when the City's water usage is at its lowest and it will allow the contractor to shut down one of the actiflo chambers for installation.

"By having the two actiflo chambers, so we have our capacity in two places, so through the January to March period we can run on one chamber with no worries," he said.

The stainless steel required for the air scour system will take 16 weeks to be ready and would be subject to tariffs imposed by the U.S. government.

"Now that President Trump put all the tariffs on steel and different metals so that's subject to that," he said. "So we managed to get this contractor AWI to hold their pricing if we get it approved now, which is part of why we brought it for approval now with the approval of next year's budget funding."

The City's 2018 capital budget had $105,000 set aside for the air scour system, so to fund the remaining project the City used $150,000 from reallocated funds and agreed to use $150,000 in next year's budget for the installation of the products.