Aquatera Utilities warns the Town of Hinton could face long-term difficulties staffing its water treatment plant if operations are brought in-house.
The Grande Prairie-based utility company, which also handles operations at Jasper’s wastewater treatment plant, has managed Hinton’s water treatment plant since 2018.
“The industry continues to be more and more challenging,” said Aquatera CEO Vaughn Bend. “There, overall, is a general shortage of operators in the industry, and so they have the ability to move anywhere they want, and smaller communities, we found, have been having trouble attracting operators long-term.”
Town administration has argued that while Aquatera has met performance expectations, the service cost $481,489 in 2024, and the Town could save $100,000 annually if utility department staff fulfilled the work instead.
“The Town of Hinton is in process of renewing its agreement with Aquatera for the operation of its water treatment plant facilities,” said Town spokesperson Natasha Buck in an email. “As part of the Town’s due diligence, it is comparing the costs and feasibility of taking the operations in-house. No final decisions have been made.”
Bend commended Town administration for its work in trying to find savings and reaffirmed Aquatera’s willingness to work with them as long as possible.
“These are tough economic times, and I commend them for making sure that every dollar that’s invested delivers maximum value for the community,” he said.
Although having yet to see a breakdown of the $100,000 in potential savings, Bend noted the importance of considering how Aquatera offered other services beyond operating the treatment plant and had to cover the cost of unforeseen emergencies or operators going on vacation or sick leave.
“That value assessment needs to be brought into play when you’re looking at if you hire a couple operators for the Town or do you partner with the organization like Aquatera that has over 200 professionals in operations, maintenance, engineering, etc.,” Bend said. “It’s a quite it’s a hard comparison because the options are quite different.”
Last week, Hinton council discussed the proposal, with some councillors expressing hesitation because while the Town currently had the certified staff necessary to operate the plant, that might not be the case in the long term.
Bend noted even Aquatera as a large organization has had trouble retaining operators in several communities, with Hinton having six different operators over the last six years.
“The turnover is quite a lot,” he said. “The other thing that we’ve been able to do because of our depth is we’ve covered Hinton’s operations about 65 different times in the last five years where there was a sick leave, someone quit, a parental leave, and when you look at that, the big scheme of things, those are the things that need to be brought into the analysis.”
In addition, Aquatera evacuated Jasper employees during last summer’s wildfire, covered the operation of the wastewater treatment plant from Hinton and provided personnel from Grande Prairie to help get the water system back online in time for re-entry.
Bend said they would have conversations with the Town of Hinton but would support their decision regardless and assist with the transition should council decide to bring operations in-house.
“We understand the challenges that are faced by municipalities every day, so we’ve actually built an option for small and mid-sized communities that cannot really do it themselves,” he added. “We have big-city capability with small town values.”
