Motorists who may have had to put up with a crappy commute in recent months will be pleased to hear that work on a new sewer on Front Street is in the home stretch.
Metro Vancouver has been working on a major sewer upgrade project in the section of Front Street between 10th and Begbie streets since April and is expecting to reopen Front Street next month. A section of Columbia Street that has also been partially off-limits to motorists will reopen next week.
Colin Meldrum, division manager of collection systems and liquid waste services for Metro Vancouver, said the work that’s currently underway is connecting a sewer on Front Street into the system near the intersection of Front and Columbia streets.
“We have done the work on Columbia. We have finished it up this week and we are in the process of trying to get the road repaved and opened up for traffic,” he told the Record Nov. 15. “We expect Columbia to be back up and running normally on Nov. 20th.”
While the section of Columbia Street on the north side of Kelly O’Bryan’s (the old Keg building) will reopen next week, it will be about a month before Front Street reopens.
“We are on the last piece of work right now, which is actually doing the connection work on Front Street itself. We have got a sewer that we built a while ago down Front Street and we basically just put a cap on it, so we could do the connection at a later date, which is where we are now,” Meldrum said. “That connection work should be done and Front Street should be restored about Dec. 15. That’s the target we are aiming for right now.”
The sewer upgrade is related to the Sapperton pump station that’s under construction near Cumberland and Brunette. It will eventually carry liquid waste from New Westminster and neighbouring communities to the Annacis Island treatment plant.
“The sewer down Front Street will not be operational yet,” Meldrum said. “It is waiting for completion of the Sapperton pump station, which is under construction right now.”
Construction of the Sapperton pump station is about two-thirds done and set to be complete in 2019, Meldrum said.
“This is a key piece of infrastructure that is going to help protect the environment and public health,” he said. “It’s one of a series of projects that are all going to work together to improve our sewer system.”
The reopening of Front Street will be about six weeks later than expected, which is due to a number of challenges along the way, Meldrum said.
“It’s probably one of the more challenging projects I have worked on,” he said. “It’s working around the community, all the traffic issues, the sequence of events that have to happen. Then we had some challenges which we didn’t expect – there was more contaminated soils than we thought. There was debris in the excavation.”
The original sewer that was built in the 1970s was laid on concrete, which came as a surprise to Metro Vancouver.
“We did not expect to have this big masse of concrete underneath our sewer that we had to take out,” Meldrum said. “That was one delay. We had a delay early on in construction with the contractor unable to get some supplies, some specific manhole sections from the supplier.”
While the project has been underway, regular vehicle traffic has been able to travel on most of Front Street but has been required to make a short detour on Begbie Street. Large trucks haven’t been allowed on Front Street and were rerouted to Royal Avenue.
Meldrum said Metro Vancouver has had a few complaints about the project, but has been working closely with city hall to address any concerns.
“We are working closely to mitigate that,” he said. “Some of the businesses have expressed some concern. We are trying to work with all the stakeholders and get this done as soon as possible.”
