Council is meeting in-camera today to talk about the upgrades at the new Whitney pump station.
The 4:30 p.m. meeting, which is closed to the public, was announced late last week. The notice on the city’s website says it is for advice subject to client-solicitor privilege about upgrades to Whitney Pump Station 4, which is located on Highway 101 just east of the Whitney Arena.
In an update on the project last month, Manager of Public Utilities Steve Kukulka told council that work at the site had stopped late last year.
At that time, he said they were talking to a specialist to make sure the issue is localized. When construction restarts, he said there is about two to three months of work remaining.
Building Pumping Station 4, installing two stormwater equalization tanks, and upgrading the force mains is the first phase of a two-phase project to upgrade the sewage system in the east end of the city.
Work on phase one started in 2014, however ground-settling and legal issues have contributed to it not yet being completed.
Phase two is upgrading the mechanical, electrical and instrumentation systems, along with other work, at the remaining five pump stations.
At a recent council meeting, council talked about those upgrades in-camera. They later deferred a vote to award the project to the contractor until public works gets back to them.
In a director's order last year, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change gave the city new deadlines to complete the system upgrades.
The deadline for phase one was Feb. 28, while the second-phase date is Oct. 31, 2020.
Right now, in Porcupine and South Porcupine, when the system’s capacity is exceeded raw sewage is bypassed into Porcupine Lake. While this usually occurs when there is a lot of precipitation or during the spring melt, recently when the pumps were clogged at station five on Florence Street due to materials in the system, 491 cubic metres of raw sewage was bypassed into the lake.
Earlier this year, a group of residents concerned about the future of Porcupine Lake met with the Canadian Environmental Law Association (CELA), a non-profit specialty clinic funded by Legal Aid Ontario, to look at potential options to clean up the lake.
With the sewage bypasses, the residents are concerned about the odour, potential risks for health and the environment, and the overall future of the lake.
CELA is still gathering information and plans to have another meeting with residents to talk about the next steps.
