Sewer-system fix is costly
Kamloops will spend an extra $600,000 upgrading a portion of the sanitary-sewer system that led to a weeklong shutdown of Mission Flats Road when it collapsed in 2011.
In the summer of that year, one of two trunk mains leading to the main sewage-pumping station on the South Shore collapsed, forcing the city to pump liquid waste into a pool at the Domtar pulp mill and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on emergency repairs.
Tracy Kyle, the city’s new public-works director, told city council the collapse is now believed to be the result of corrosion from sewer gasses. Typically, the pipe should last 75 years. In this case, it failed after 41 years.
Kyle said the cost of the project is increasing because the city has since discovered other sections of piping leading to the pumping plant are also structurally compromised.
To try to prevent the pipe from failing again, the city plans to use PVC pipe in place of concrete and use corrosion-resistant additives in construction.
Funds for the project, which has a cost of $1.2 million, are coming from another sewage-treatment project, which is being pushed back to 2014.
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