6 | City of Winkler house by Botha and his team. Of course, this isn’t the first time Botha came to the fiscal rescue. Some years ago, Winkler needed to resolve the refurbishing of an elevated water storage tank. It was determined that costs to refurbish the storage tank would cost upwards of $500,000. Botha ultimately took the elevated tank offline, installed variable frequency pumps, and the system has been working just fine since 2009 (for a prudent cost of only $25,000). The storage capacity lost by removing the tank was replaced by a balancing tank at the new water treatment plant. But again, Botha is not so interested in talking about his professional expertise, rather prefers to focus on how advances in infrastructure are now benefitting residents of Winkler. To put that perspective, he explains that as much as 60 percent of the local water supply comes from a resource known as the Winkler Acquifer (the rest provided by an enterprise known as the Pembina Valley Water Co.). The city’s former water treatment plant was reaching the end of its lifecycle, but otherwise, protocols relating to the extraction of water found Winkler tapping into that known as the brackish zone. Botha Winkler City Engineer Johan Botha and staff
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