District of Squamish says it is making a ‘series of efforts’ to prevent a failure of critical infrastructure like the one last month that forced crews to push sewer waste water into the estuary. This work involves rebuilding the manhole and creating a permanent bypass of the Queens Way lift station.
“We also continue to conduct ongoing inspections of all sanitary sewers with CCTV cameras to help prioritize maintenance, repairs, and replacements to identify and correct issues as they arise. More than $9 million has been invested over the last five years to this end,” said Rachel Boguski, the media relations for District.
She said the District was aware of the failed manhole’s condition and that plans were in place to do the necessary upgrade. In fact, emergency work was scheduled for the same night the failure happened.
She said the work to replace the failed manhole at the lift station is already in progress and a contractor has been hired to complete the construction of a new manhole. However, an RFQ was not issued for this repair work due to its urgency.
The failure of Queens Way lift station discharged roughly 1,587 cubic metres of wastewater into the Squamish Estuary on January 14, equal to 11% of the total volume of wastewater generated by the community that day.
