City of Yellowknife to redirect funds for pipeline work to replace pumphouse

Yellowknife city councillors voted Monday to change the scope of a federal agreement and allocate funding originally for its water pipeline, to replace a pumphouse.

Pumphouse needs replacing regardless of how city advances pipeline project

Natalie Pressman · CBC News · Posted: Mar 11, 2025 9:14 AM EDT | Last Updated: March 11

A big White building that says City of Yellowknife Water Treatment Plant on it. A truck is parked out front. — Yellowknife city councillors voted Monday to change the scope of a federal agreement and allocate funding originally intended for a water pipeline to instead be used to replace an aging pumphouse. (CBC)

Yellowknife city council is allocating federal funding originally intended for the city's drinking water pipeline to help replace a pumphouse after skyrocketing costs made the initial plan unfeasible, according to city staff.

In 2019, the city secured $25.8 million in federal funding through the government's Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund (DMAF) to upgrade Yellowknife's aging drinking water infrastructure, including replacing an 8.4-kilometre pipeline on the Yellowknife River.

That money would cover 75 per cent of the project's cost at the time, and the agreement requires the city to contribute the remaining $8.6 million.

In February, a consulting firm said the new pipeline would actually cost $107.7 million.

Chris Greencorn, the city's director of public works and engineering, said that cost is prohibitive.

"We just don't have the money," he said at a governance and priorities meeting Monday.

Instead, city staff recommended that mayor and council change the scope of the federal DMAF agreement to use the money to replace pumphouse one, another piece of Yellowknife's drinking water infrastructure that's due for replacement.

The pumphouse is described in a public memo provided to city councillors as being "in a state of failure" with "significant amounts of hazardous materials." That memo says that parts of the pumphouse date to 1948 and that it would be more problematic to try and bring the "antiquated" facility up to current building codes.

It would cost $37 million to replace pumphouse one. Monday, council voted to use the $32 million set aside from the 2019 DMAF agreement — with $25.8M coming from the federal government and $8.6M from the city. The city would have to come up with the remaining $5 million for the new pumphouse.

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The changes also push back the DMAF deadline from 2028 to 2032.

For the pipeline itself, council has put off any decisions to the next council meeting on March 24. Councillors are weighing whether to continue extracting water from the river or whether to take water from Yellowknife Bay — a cheaper option but one that comes with historic concerns about arsenic contamination.

Whatever the decision, councillors agreed the pumphouse would have to be updated regardless.

"I don't think we have any other option here," Coun. Garett Cochrane said.