Ty Stokes explains the situation to council

It's not the whole thing, but some members of City Council say it's a start on a major project that supplies water to South Hill.

Councillors have approved the first phase of replacing Moose Jaw's East Feeder Line. 650 metres will be replaced at a cost of nearly $3 million. The issue is that the entire thing needs to be replaced and costs keep coming in over budget, so, City Hall has decided to replace it bit by bit.

"It's got some known leaks, one of which is very visible and has gotten slightly worse in the last several months, although it has been leaking to some degree for a couple years now." said City engineer Ty Stokes. "It's not band-aidable, the only solution to it is to do a complete line replacement which would involve directional drilling."

The entire pipeline is 4.2km long and this project only handles about 15% of the work, yet it takes up nearly half of the budget.