Construction part of 'short-term pain for long-term gain'

It's like crawling into a black hole. "You can't see anything at all," said Blair Randell. "It's pitch black."

Randell is one of five divers working on the construction of a new sewage pumping station along the Waverley Road.

The divers are taking turns doing three hour shifts of underwater work in an eight-metre deep muddy hole, and they're doing it all by touch.

The underwater work, undertaken by Dominion Diving, is part of an ongoing project that started in June to replace the area's sewage pump station, which was built in the mid-1960s.

Braemar Drive is also being repaved, a new sidewalk and curb is going in, and water and sewer pipes are being replaced.

This is all wrapped up in the $3-million price tag.

As construction began early summer, the length of the road disruption hasn't gone unnoticed.

"I hear frustration from people over how big the project is," said East Dartmouth-The Lakes Coun. Andrew Younger. "Many people think the project is moving slowly, but the road work is on schedule. I think most people don't realize the scale of the project ... it is very complicated."

Residents in the area will be pleased to know the road will be temporarily repaired for the winter, and traffic flow will return to normal within the next few weeks.

"Unfortunately, that (road construction) is part of the short-term pain for long-term gain," said Ian Guppy, senior environmental engineer with Halifax Water. "This is a large project and we're doing it all at once and doing it right."

The pipe work under the road will be completed in the spring. Construction of the pump station will continue throughout the winter.

The existing sewage pumping station, which is underground in front of the Irving station, has a steel structure that has corroded to a point where it became a safety issue. It was also designed to overflow during power outages and in heavy rain, which is no longer environmentally acceptable.

The new station will include an underground tank and an above-ground building, which will prevent such occurrences.

"It will meet all current environmental standards," said Guppy, who notes the construction of the building is a bit behind schedule.

The work is being done by Dexter Construction on a strip of land between two bodies of water, Red Bridge Pond and Lake Micmac, causing some construction challenges. One being, the water level in the hole continuously rises to meet the water level of the pond.

The on-site divers are now using high pressure hoses to flush out the last little bit of excavation work in the corners of the roughly 15-metre-by-15-metre foundation of the station.

For safety reasons, there is security on the site 24 hours a day.

Once all the structural pieces are in place, 1.5 metres of reinforced concrete will be poured underwater to create a foundation.

"The concrete will plug the bottom and allow us to deal with the dirty water. It will be an amount we can deal with," said Guppy. "We'll treat it and then pump it back into the pond."

One of the reasons work has been so challenging on the site is because it wouldn't have been possible to pump water out of the trench and make it dry, as there was no place to pump the dirty water to.

"You couldn't just pump the water into the lake," said Jamie Hannam, manager of engineering and information services with Halifax Water. "We had to look at all the environmental concerns."

Three systems of silt curtains were also put into Lake Micmac to ensure sediment doesn't get into the water.

The entire project is expected to be completed sometime in the spring, at which point a small cottage-like structure will sit on the site and the parking lot for Red Bridge Pond will be returned to normal.

"On the surface we'll see a nice building, underground is where everything goes on," said Hannam. "That's one of the new themes in HRM, to make city structures blend with the surroundings."

All sewage from the area will go into the station's holding tank and will then be pumped to meet up with the Harbour Solutions pumping station in Dartmouth.

The new station will serve homes in the Port Wallis area, along the Waverley Road, Keystone Village and Montebello.

Out of the city's 160 pumping stations, Guppy said this one is in the Top 20 in size, smaller only in comparison to the Harbour Solutions stations.

"Once finished, it will last a lifetime," he said. "All this disruption will be worth it."

lmckay@hfxnews.ca