Yellowknife city council has voted in favour of signing an agreement with the federal government that’s aimed at bringing piped water and sewer service to the city’s airport.

Councillors voted at a special meeting on Wednesday. The agreement would allow the Department of National Defence (DND) to pay for all of the engineering scoping work needed to get the airport off of trucked water service.

City manager Stephen Van Dine said that work is estimated at close to $15 million, though that is a rough estimate for now.  

“This is not taxpayers fronting a bill for a ‘maybe,'” said deputy mayor Rob Warburton at Wednesday’s meeting. “This is [DND] wanting us to get going on a design to see what we can do.”

The agreement follows Prime Minister Mark Carney’s announcement last week in Yellowknife that the federal government would invest $32 billion in Canadian Armed Forces forward operating locations in Yellowknife, Inuvik and Iqaluit, as well as a military base in Goose Bay, Labrador. Infrastructure upgrades to airfields are part of the sum. 

Van Dine said agreements with the federal government usually involve cost-sharing or a matching component, but this is different because DND has a capital assistance program for communities where they expect to have an impact, as in Yellowknife. 

The program lets the funds flow directly to the city, which will undertake the work itself. 

Warburton said the contribution agreement marks the first step of work that is happening very fast by city standards. He said the scoping work will clarify where and when pipes will go in. 

Van Dine said city administration has explained to military officials the need to improve water and sewer service at the airport.

“With additional investment from DND and their level of ambition, we wanted to make sure that we shifted away from the trucked service,” he said.

He said this agreement is expected to be the first of two parts. The first one is related to engineering work, and construction will follow later. 

He said the engineering work will also look at potential lines toward the Engle business district and down Old Airport Road. 

The long-term operation and maintenance of the infrastructure once it’s built is a question for the city to look at, Van Dine said.  

Once the engineering agreement is in place, the city will look at procurement to get the work done. 

Van Dine says the goal is for the work to “advance significantly” in 2026. One of the first orders of business will be to identify a route for the pipe, he said.