TransAlta is a power generation and wholesale marketing company operating in Canada, the United States, Mexico and Australia. It operates coal-fired, gas-fired, hydro and renewable facilities, including three power plants in the Wabamun Lake area, west of Edmonton, Alberta.

The Sundance power plant is the largest coal-fired electrical generating facility in western Canada. The plant is located 70 kilometres west of Edmonton, Alberta on the south shore of Wabamun Lake.

For the past 25 years, two of these plants have used water from the lake to feed their cooling towers. The level of the lake has decreased significantly, not only from power plant intake, but also from lack of rainfall, reduced surface runoff, and natural evaporation. The challenge was to recharge Wabamum lake by treating nearby cooling pond water, fed by the North Saskatchewan River, and returning it to the lake.

TransAlta built the first phase of Wabamun Lake Water Treatment Plant next to the Sundance power plant in 1997 to mitigate its operations' historic and ongoing effect on lake level. In 2001, TransAlta expanded the output of water to the lake with the construction, by John Meunier, of a second plant (see process diagram).

The plant has to meet stringent effluent water quality requirements of 0.10 NTU turbidity and no more than 1/100 mL of living zooplankton, to protect the ecology of Wabamun Lake from introducing North Saskatchewan River water to the lake. It also has to produce 8 million cubic metres of treated water per year. Wabamun Lake is expected to return to its original level by the end of 2007.