After upgrades to five pumping stations in the Whitney-Tisdale system were deferred earlier this year, the project has been approved.
Council approved awarding the $16.6-million project to upgrade the mechanical, electrical and instrumentation systems, along with other work at the stations, to Northec Construction Ltd at its April 24 meeting.
Upgrading the system is required for the city to meet a Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) director’s order.
When the bids for the project were received earlier this year, the lowest was 67 per cent higher than what the city’s consultant predicted.
As such, in February council deferred accepting the then $16.8-million bid from Northec, which was $7 million more than the consultant’s estimate. At the time, councillors asked staff to look at breaking the upgrades into smaller projects.
The project won’t be broken up. By working on stations at the same time, however, manager of public utilities Steve Kukulka said there is a $246,300 savings. The project is now also expected to take 102 weeks to complete, instead of the originally anticipated 135 weeks.
“The actual work did not change and it did not decrease the amount of work to be done,” Kukulka said.
Work is expected to start concurrently at pumping stations six, five and two this fall. In the spring/summer of 2019 work should start at stations three and one. A new sewage forcemain would then be installed between stations three and four in the winter of 2019-2020.
If all goes according to schedule, the work will be done by April 14, 2020, which is ahead of the MOECC’s Oct. 31, 2020 deadline.
While the project increases the pump capacity at the stations, it won’t eliminate raw sewage being bypassed into Porcupine Lake.
Currently, when the system’s capacity is exceeded during the spring melt, when there’s a lot of precipitation, and other special events, sewage is released into the lake.
Coun. Pat Bamford said people will be happy the pumps are moving along, but cautioned them about what to expect.
“The thing that I want to avoid is everyone thinking that this is the end all and be all and there will never ever be any overflow into the lake. This will reduce the overflows,” he said.
Timmins Mayor Steve Black also noted that the system was established in 1970.
“This is an antiquated infrastructure system that was designed 50 years and infrastructure developments and changes have occurred over time and this council and the previous council have approved initiatives as recommended to try and bring the system up to the current requirements to stop those bypasses. The bypasses have been occurring and have been part of these infrastructure systems all over,” he said.
The project approved this week is the second of a two-phase project to upgrade the system servicing Porcupine and South Porcupine.
The first phase is building Pumping Station 4 and installing two stormwater equalization tanks, both of which are located on Highway 101 just east of the Whitney Arena, and upgrading force mains.
Work on phase one started in 2014, however ground-settling and legal issues have contributed to it not yet being completed.
The deadline for that phase under the MOECC director’s order was Feb. 28, 2018.
Work at the site hasn't been completed yet and was stopped last year after settling issues were experienced again.
“What we’ve done at this point in time is halted construction while we’re consulting with soil experts and with engineering on how we can find a solution to the problem that we’ve encountered so that we can have a plan to go forward and resume construction and get the project finished within the timelines that were worked out with the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, who know full well our situation,” said Timmins CAO Dave Landers.
“We’ve been in regular contact with them and continue to meet with us and monitor the situation as we push those timelines back because of some of the construction difficulties. Right now the project is being reviewed by some external experts to the city who are working with us and the with the constructor and the city’s contract manager to try to move this thing forward with an engineered solution.”
Staff expect to bring an update on station four to council before summer.
“After we have a solution to bring to (the MOECC) we’ll go to see them. We’ve shared with them the information we have to date, so we’ll meet with them again and sort of plan our way forward with them so that they’re full aware of what we’re doing and they can continue to monitor the city’s activity and its efforts to progress towards completion,” Landers said.
