A local company is turning remote lakes into drinking water.
Bole’s Feeds has been selling Culligan Water Systems in Thunder Bay for more than 35 years , mostly to residential customers.
But in the past five years they’ve seen a lot of companies asking for a way to bring potable water to places like remote mining camps and First Nations communities.
So the company designed a portable water filtration system that can be used anywhere. Portable may be a relative term as it’s the size of a shipping container
“(The portable water filtration system is) capable of taking water from a brown coloured inland type lake in our area and purifying it,” co-owner David MacKay said.
The company recently built a system for a mining camp near Red Lake that’s capable of servicing 350 people every day.
Because the systems are custom-built, MacKay said the sky’s the limit in terms of how big they could build a system. Prices range from just under $100,000 to $500,000.
Water treatment technician Jeff Mitchell said a system can be built, from order to delivery, in two months.
“It’s very quick for the design right through construction and then delivery,” he said.
Culligan also tries to use as much local material, contractors and suppliers as possible to build the system, which uses nano-membrane technology.
While they’ve only built three so far, MacKay said as more companies head to remote locations, they’ll see a growing need.
“Hopefully in the future it will grow as demand increases,” he said.
