Cost of broken sewer main snarling Vancouver traffic hits $7M and counting

The City of Vancouver says work to deal with a broken sewer main in the heart of the city has cost more than $7 million so far.

Meanwhile, the exact cause of the breach — which cropped up at Main Street and Terminal Avenue in mid-June — remains a mystery.

“This has been the challenge and why this work has taken so long,” Lon LaClaire, the city’s general manager of engineering, told Global News.

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LaClaire explained that the city’s sewer pipes are rated to last for over a century, while the broken pipe was just 26 years old.

He said engineers discovered corrosion in a number of sections of the pipe that led to its failure — but don’t yet understand why.

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“The corrosion in itself is a little bit mysterious,” he said. “We know that there is salt water that makes its way into those pipes and that could be a factor.”

The city has sent samples for analysis, but can’t actually fix or replace the pipe until they understand what went wrong.

The cost and complexity of the job were made worse by the need to design and install a bypass pipe while the broken main was taken out of service.

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“It’s all unplanned work — when a sewer pipe like this fails, we have to go on-site, we have to quickly source equipment and materials and contractors, sucker trucks to pump that sewage out of the pipe and prevent it from creating a hazard for the neighbourhood,” LaClaire said.

“That operation had to be in place 24/7, so 24 hours a day we were pumping sewage with heavy equipment, all the labour and equipment costs that result from that, and then, of course, the cost of bringing in consultants to do a bypass … and all the costs of the investigation.”

The $7 million price tag, he added, does not include the cost of the eventual permanent fix.

There is a bright spot in the mess for Vancouver commuters.

LaClaire said the eastbound stretch of Terminal Avenue between Quebec and Main streets, which has seen lane closures for months due to the pipe work, is slated to reopen by the end of next week.

He said it will remain open until likely next fall, when crews will return to decommission the bypass pipe and do a permanent repair to the main sewer line.