St James Sewer System Information Session

A combined sewer is a pipe that allows for land drainage and sewage from homes and businesses to be combined within the sewer pipe that carries the waste water to the treatment plant and land drainage to the river.

A combined sewer overflow occurs during wet weather events when the runoff exceeds the system's capacity, causing diluted sewage to spill directly into our rivers instead of backing up in your basement.

This construction project will install separate sewers, which will separate out the land drainage from the wastewater and transport them to the river and treatment plant, respectively.

The City has improved the combined sewer system operation and studied options to further reduce CSOs, including:

• completion of a CSO Management Strategy in 2002
• implementation of a Monitoring Program in 2009 to identify and quantify CSO events
• proactively eliminated wet weather flows from the combined sewer district through infrastructure upgrades
• invested more than $300 million since 1977 improving the city's sewer system.

The City of Winnipeg submitted a Preliminary Proposal for the CSO Master Plan to the Manitoba Government in late 2015. The CSO Master Plan will set the long term direction for stewardship of the local waterways and management of CSOs in Winnipeg.

The areas currently involved in CSO Relief projects include: St. James, Fort Garry/Fort Rouge, Seven Oaks, Transcona and Cockburn-Calrossie.

There will be two smaller projects in St. James over the next ten years once this current project is complete. The projects will be located on:

• Ellice Avenue – from Ferry Road to Century
• Parkside Drive – the corner closest to Jae Eadie Park, which is scheduled to coincide with planned pavement reconstruction.

The work in the area surrounding Jae Eadie Park is scheduled to begin in January 2017 and will end in June 2018. The remaining work will be completed at some point in the next 10 years.

Installing an outfall into the river requires the river to be at its lowest levels. River levels tend to be the lowest in winter and this why this work will begin in January.

No, this sewer renewal work is not related to the road reconstruction completed on Parkside Drive five years ago.  The Water and Waste and Public Works Departments work very closely to complete road works and sewer repairs in a coordinated effort to avoid tearing up new roads to fix things shortly after their reconstruction.  Sometimes, despite our best efforts, this cannot be achieved.  Normally, we install a new drainage pipe in a trenchless manner to minimize construction impacts on the community.  With this project, however, it became clear when we tested the soil conditions the trenchless approach was not possible.   Unfortunately, this means that we will have disturb the reconstructed roadway on Parkside Drive in order to complete this necessary work.  Once the work is complete, however, the road (along with any other areas damaged during construction), will be completely restored.

Areas impacted include Jae Eadie Park, the active transport pathways, sidewalks, roads, boulevards and the riverbank. These areas will all be completely restored.

The current work planned for Jae Eadie Park and the surrounding area will cost approximately $6 million. In 2016, the City has spent approximately $13 million for CSO relief across Winnipeg. The overall budget to renew sewers to provide CSO relief to the St. James neighbourhood is approximately $70 million.