East Side Lands Trunk Sewer

[ZEBuilder]

The East Side Lands as most people know are the lands expected for development in Breslau and northern Cambridge generally bound by Highway 7 to the north, Shantz Station to the east, Maple Grove to the south and the Grand River to the west. Currently sanitary flows from this area feed into Cambridge in the Sportsworld area and into Kitchener from Breslau. However the current system does not have the capacity to take the sanitary flows expected from the area. Due to this the Region of Waterloo is exploring ways to increase the capacity through a new trunk sanitary sewer called the East Side Lands Trunk Sewer.

In the current plan the sanitary sewer will start at Boychuk Drive in Cambridge and run to the Kitchener Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP). Generally speaking most underground infrastructure in the Region is constructed using your typical cut and cover method. This is what you see during road reconstructions and new developments. However in some cases that isn't possible given environmental restrictions or even artesian conditions. In this case you tend to use micro tunneling. This has been done before along Intermarket Rd to cross the creek/marsh, in Deer Ridge on a few deep pipes, planned for the Biehn Drive Extension in Kitchener and a couple of other projects. Overall it isn't something all that common in Waterloo Region. In other municipalities such as Peel, York and Toronto it is becoming extremely common given how complex and spaghetti like underground infrastructure has become as we continue to grow. Just as some examples in Peel you have the East to West Diversion Sanitary Trunk Sewer, and the DRCW in Toronto.

Now in the Region this is the first significant tunneling project of scale and is expected to start construction in the next few years. It is still in detailed design but there's enough public now thanks to a HIA that it isn't entirely secret anymore, there is obviously more that could be said on the project but I'll leave it at that. Overall it is planned to be a 1200mm gravity feed sanitary sewer that will be micro tunneled from Boychuk Drive in Cambridge to the Kitchener WWTP. It will follow public roadways and existing easements to minimize property impacts. It will be crossing the Grand River on a bridge structure about 11m above ground surface and then continue to the WWTP above ground. The tunneled section will be 4.5m to 26m below existing grade.

The bridge across the Grand River will be a truss bridge, currently the plan is for it to be painted pale blue and white based on the HIA (the only thing public for the project currently). The HIA for the project contains 30% drawings of the plan and profile of the sewer, General Arrangement (GA) Drawings for the bridges, then all your typical HIA stuff.

Link to the HIA: 24CH-015 East Side Lands TS HIA

Bridge Rendering from HIA:
   

Below is a map of the current route from 30% design. The route has changed slightly from this as design has progressed but there is nothing public about that.
   

[bravado]

And they said only infill is expensive... what a project.

[creative]

Paid for by development fees?

[danbrotherston]

Paid for by development fees?

What's the point? It still drives up costs. Makes housing more unaffordable.

By the way, you and I might be dead by then but in 50-70 years the taxpayers are still going to have to fund replacing that entire pipeline, just as today we are paying to replace all the stuff that was built in the 60s.

[nms]

Since the bridge is planned anyway, how much might it add to cost to add a pedestrian or MUT component on top? It offer a travel route between the Ken Seiling Museum and the Pioneer Tower (plus the Pioneer Tower neighbourhood).

[ZEBuilder]

Since the bridge is planned anyway, how much might it add to cost to add a pedestrian or MUT component on top?  It offer a travel route between the Ken Seiling Museum and the Pioneer Tower (plus the Pioneer Tower neighbourhood).

From an engineering perspective it is entirely possible, you would just need a very significant stair/ramp structure on the Kitchener WWTP side which would increase the cost significantly. You'd still need one on the Pioneer Tower side but much smaller however given the existing slope you'd definitely have to do some extensive slope analysis.

Given we'd be building it as a barrier free ramp based on the OBC your ramp on the WWTP side would be around 160m long given maximum slopes and minimum landing requirements. The entire span across the Grand River is 75m, so your ramp structure alone would be more than twice the length of the Grand River span. On the Pioneer Tower side you'd be looking at a ramp of about 70m in length, which would require significant excavation of the existing park, assuming the Region doesn't use retaining walls.

Now cost wise you'd effectively be twinning the Grand River bridge and then adding a structure twice it's length, with associated larger foundation works for the main Grand River span, you'd easily be looking at tens of millions.

Keep in mind the pedestrian bridge along Avalon and Chandler cost 10 million (roughly) with a main span of 50m and roughly 5-6m off the ground with respect to highway grade, I don't have the design drawing anymore so I can't give a proper height, regardless this would be be way larger than that.