Yorkton Mayor Aaron Kienle spent three days in Ottawa in early June 2026, meeting with federal decision-makers to push for funding to replace the city’s aging H.M. Bailey Water Pollution Control Plant. The facility, which has been operating for over 70 years, is at the end of its functional life and can no longer keep up with the city’s needs or environmental rules.
The project comes with a steep price tag, with estimates ranging from $164 million to as high as $351 million in 2025 dollars with no GST included. The city has already put $1 million into early planning and engineering, completing about 30 percent of the design work, so it has a clear picture of what the job will cost.
While Yorkton’s population sits around 17,000 people, the treatment plant actually handles waste that equals a community of 40,000 when you count heavy use by food processors and other industries. The planned upgrade would boost that capacity to a population equivalent of 64,000, making room for growth. Kienle stressed that the city’s food-processing sector is important to the whole country, and that local residents shouldn’t have to carry the full financial weight of the upgrade on their own.
During his trip, the mayor met with senators David Arnot, Pamela Wallin, and Todd Lewis, along with advisers to the minister of agriculture and agri-food, the minister of housing, infrastructure and communities, and the Prime Minister’s Office. He also sat down with Yorkton-Melville MP Cathay Wagantall and Red Deer MP Burton Bailey. This isn’t the first time the city has asked for help; two earlier applications to the now-expired Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program were turned down, partly because the project was not shovel-ready at the time.
“Municipalities can’t run deficits,” Kienle said. “When the federal or provincial governments identify a need, they can borrow or adjust budgets. We can’t do that. We rely on funding partnerships and programs like ICIP to make large projects possible.” The city has also already raised water and sewer rates by 8.91 percent starting January 1, 2026, adding about $7 a month for a typical household, as part of catching up on underfunded utility work.
