Based on recommendations given to council at its Aug. 26 meeting by engineering consultants R.J. Burnside and Associates, the firm has been hired again to further study the town’s sometimes problematic sewer system.
“We’ll get going with this fairly soon,” Operations and Facilities manager Pat Hickerson said Tuesday. “It’s pretty much a continuation on identifying our problem areas.”
The project, which will cost about $56,000, will focus on the area south of Scott Street and the area north of Scott Street to Third Street East, from Shevlin Avenue to Williams Avenue.
Hickerson noted one of the most important aspects of the three-month project includes a spreadsheet model for the entire town storm sewer system as well as a detailed hydraulic model to establish whether existing pipe size provides sufficient capacity to convey the actual and theoretical and theoretical design flows.
The other aspects include:
•A thorough review of existing sewer video inspections for the area in question. This information will be correlated with detailed repair records available.
Similarly, the repair records will be reviewed and correlated with the smoke testing report;
•Flow monitoring, which would help to characterize the response to a rainfall hydrograph. An immediate response to rainfall (15-30 minutes) in a catchment area would indicate direct inflow from a cross connection or roof drains.
This monitoring would be done three times for a period of eight-12 weeks; and
•Should the flow monitoring indicate an immediate response to rainfall in one specific area and direct connection of roof drains is not suspected in that area, then a structured smoke testing program will be used to further investigate the possibility of a direct connection of the smoke and sanitary systems.
Back on Aug. 26, Heather McKenzie, an engineering consultant with R.J. Burnside and Associates, revealed the town’s sewer system was not to blame for a number of floodings local residents suffered after the storms of July 31, 2001 when reporting on the initial study.