The Niverville water main project that has been underway since mid-summer will be coming in under budget.

Niverville Mayor Myron Dyck says the project was initially estimated to cost just over two million dollars and the cost was to be shared evenly by the town and the provincial and federal governments. He says now that the project will cost less than anticipated the town will be able to put the excess funds towards additional water upgrades.

“Council has made the decision to extend the project to still get that full 2.043 million dollar project which we have been approved for. Upgrades to our water treatment plant was one of the things that was a priority for council, and so just over $400,000 of upgrades is going to be done, and it has to do with pump enhancement and things to the water treatment plant.”

Dyck says the water main project is the first big step in a master plan to bring potable water from the town's water treatment plant to all of Niverville.

“Some would ask, 'why don't you pass the saving on to those that are directly impacted?' The decision that council made is that the overall goal is still to bring water to all of the community and if we had some money left over, we were looking at what other things we could do to take a little bit larger bite out of that next phase.”

Dyck says because federal and provincial funding was granted to the water main project, council needed to apply for approval to use excess money for additional upgrades to make sure it is within the scope of the project they initially approved.

“We can't say 'here is 2.043 we are going to use this for water and, oh by the way, we decided to pave a street,' so you have to submit to them saying we have had some saving, here are some other things we would like to do, we believe it is still encompassed in the water project.”

Dyck says council is glad that they are able to do more than they set out to do for no additional cost.