The heavy lifting has started as city crews work to put an end to the sinkhole saga.
With the help of a large crane, the first of the components making up a concrete chamber were being put into place on Thursday at the bottom of the hole that has occupied the south end of Winnipeg Street for several months now.
The chamber is made up of four bottom pieces and two roof pieces that were constructed and cured on-site over the past two weeks each weighing in at 23,000 kilograms. It will take the place of eight metres of deteriorated metal pipe and hopefully put an end to a series of sinkholes that continually emerged over the past few years.
The turbulence from the water rushing down off the adjacent hill whenever there was a storm appears to be the reason for the failure of the pipe, which was supposed to last 80 to 100 years but was only about half that age when the trouble began.
"Concrete is what large diameter or large storm drains should be made of, so we're replacing an old metal one with concrete," Josh Kelly, the city's supervisor of energy, environment and sustainability, told local media at the site.
The last of the components should be in place by next week and the stretch should be reopened to traffic by mid-to-late October. Restoring the site will be a bit more complex than simply filling the hole back in.
"There's a storm main that comes down Carney Street that needs to be connected into the chamber," Kelly said. "As we come up a little bit higher, there's electrical for the streetlights, and then as we come up higher there is curb and gutter, asphalt, pavement."
It was also more than a matter of just digging down to get to the source of the problem. Dams and three high-capacity pumps had to be installed to drain water from the site.
"We've been fighting groundwater full time," Kelly said. "They finally got a handle on it late last week or early this week and it's incredible to see how dry and clean it is down there compared to how it was a week and a half ago."
Cost of the work is still to be determined and while other projects to replace the city's aging infrastructure are in the job jar, Kelly is crossing his fingers that another "major emergency" that was the sinkhole will not rear its head.
"We've had some incredible work from our consultants and contractors and some amazing work from the city utility crews," Kelly said.
Click here for a video of the work from a drone's eye view.
