Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Sewage pipeline takes over James Bay street

Residents adjust as wastewater conduit assembled on Niagara Street prior to installation

For six weeks, residents of Niagara Street in the James Bay neighbourhood can only reach their homes by foot because a massive sewage pipe is being assembled on their street.

A section of Niagara, between St. Lawrence and South Turner Streets, has been closed to vehicular traffic because the roadway is being used as a staging area for one part of the region’s $765-million wastewater treatment project.

Crews are working 12-hour days welding and laying out a steel pipe about a metre in diameter that, when completed, will run between Ogden Point and McLoughlin Point.

Sewage now converges at Clover Point and shoots out into the sea. The wastewater project will re-direct sewage from Clover Point via a new pipe that will run along the Dallas Road waterfront to Ogden Point and then go under Victoria Harbour, connecting to a treatment plant being built at McLoughlin Point.

Map - sewage pipeline

“Sure it’s inconvenient, but I don’t mind, as I feel it is for the common good,” said Julian Woo as he prepared to take his two-year-old daughter out on his bicycle. “I don’t personally have a problem getting around, but I do feel bad for the disabled in the neighbourhood.”

The 12-metre-long pipe sections are joined in a white tent in front of White Eagle Polish Hall, a block away from Ogden Point, the entry point of the pipe as it makes its way under Victoria Harbour to the wastewater treatment plant being built at McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt.

As each section is attached, a crew drags, using heavy machinery, the increasingly longer pipe towards South Turner Street.

“It’s actually quieter overall since the project started, said Julian Osika. “There is no vehicular traffic and, surprisingly, no extra pedestrian traffic.”

The project is a disruption, but “it can’t be helped,” he said.

He rates the city’s communications around the project to the community as very informative.

Crews have spent the past few months drilling an undersea passage for the 940-metre-long pipe, which will be pulled and pushed through the tunnel.

As the pipe gets longer by the day, area residents have already found ways to mitigate its impact.

“It doesn’t bother me much,” said Chris Dixon, as he was picking up his three-year-old son, Micah, from daycare at the James Bay Community School, which borders on Niagara Street. “We knew it was coming. Wastewater treatment is something that needs to happen and everything will be back to normal soon.”

Jason Tremblay, who lives on Boyd Street and who regularly crosses Niagara Street for his daily walk, said the project just means a few extra steps for him.

“I’m more concerned with the more elderly, with their walkers and such, who have to walk around the road closure to get to the grocery store,” he said.

There is one crosswalk with a person directing traffic — about halfway up the affected section of Niagara Street — and he said there should be a few more.

The city has relaxed residential-only parking restrictions so that area residents can park their vehicles off-site while the project proceeds.

Garbage and blue-box pickup will continue for the duration of the project, but buses are being re-routed. Access to emergency services and pedestrian access will be available at all times.

The CRD undertook a community outreach effort that included door-to-door visits to the residents along the route last year. A community meeting was held for the almost 1,000 residents of Niagara and intersecting side streets.

Public information regarding the project is available from a help tent that has been set up at the corner of Niagara and Oswego Streets, by the James Bay Community School, staffed by a project representatives, who will be available during working hours.

Workers to be on the site 12 hours a day, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Friday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturdays for five weeks, and accelerate to working around the clock in the last week.

The Wastewater Treatment Project will provide tertiary treatment for wastewater, which removes phosphorus and nitrogen and practically all suspended and organic matter.

It will serve the municipalities of Victoria, Esquimalt, Saanich, Oak Bay, View Royal, Langford and Colwood, and the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations.

It consist of three components:

• A 108-megalitre per day tertiary treatment plant at McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt

• A conveyance system for piping the wastewater to the plant and the residual solids to the Residuals Treatment Facility

• A Residuals Treatment Facility at Hartland to produce Class A biosolids.

For more information, go to wastewaterproject.ca.