By Angela Brown

North Battleford tackling landfill needs

Jun 30, 2017 | 5:00 PM

City of North Battleford council agreed to lease a new piece of heavy equipment for the city’s landfill site.

The city will be renting a new $589,106 CAT landfill crawler — a specialized type of loader used for moving waste, from a Battlefords firm, at a lease cost of $84,532 per year over five years.

City manager Jim Puffalt said the existing old crawler has an auction value of about $25,000 that could help to bring down some of the cost of the lease for the new equipment. 

“The waste management facilty is very well looked after – it’s clean and it’s tidy – because we’re operating it ourselves, and putting the proper equipment in. This is a core piece of equipment,” he said.

Four suppliers submitted lease bids for consideration, with annual lease tenders ranging from about $78,000 to $84,000 per year, above the city’s budgeted amount of $70,000.

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Puffalt indicated in his report, the city’s equipment foreman and waste management foreman tested the equipment proposed and found the CAT unit the most sturdy and powerful for the job. 

“For an efficient operation, that is the type of unit we needed,” he said. “It’s a custom-designed unit, actually for use in landfills. In landfills it has to be higher to get up over the [accumulated waste material]. That is why that unit is so expensive.”

Council heard the new equipment is specialized and not readily available at auctions, so it made sense to proceed with the lease arrangement.

Puffalt said the equipment is needed because the current crawler is old, not functioning well, and is reaching the end of its life.

Workers at the waste management facility have been using the city’s compactor valued at $1 million to assist with the crawler’s work, but, as Puffalt said, this puts added pressure on the compactor, a costly piece of equipment designed for compacting waste material.  

 angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsNOW