Niagara Region watermain work a joint effort to make much-needed improvements

Located in the heart of Ontario’s wine country, the picturesque Niagara Region community of Beamsville is in the midst of a two-part, major infrastructure project that is causing some inconvenience to homes and businesses along Ontario Street, its main thoroughfare.

Earlier this year general contractor Alfred Beam Excavating began the open cut installation of a 1.7-kilometre-long, 400-millimetre-diameter PVC watermain along Ontario Street from King Street to Greenlane Road.

Using an approximately 10-member labour force and a fleet of machines including medium-to-large excavators, loaders and dozers for haulage, pickup trucks, vacuum trucks and bobcats, the contractor excavated the road sequentially in sections.

That included installing new PVC pipe, valve chambers and other appurtenances and then backfilling the trench and asphalt restoration before proceeding to the next section, says Niagara Region’s water-wastewater engineering capital projects manager Lindsay Jones.

In late August the contractor was wrapping up this phase of work and the new watermain is now operational.

But the construction crews aren’t going very far and the $18-million joint Niagara Region/Town of Lincoln project is a long way from finished.

By the middle of September Alfred Beam is scheduled to begin the open cut installation of a 600- to 700-millimetre-diameter PVC sanitary sewer pipe along the same 1.7 kilometres, although on the opposite side of the road from the watermain, says Jones.

Morrison Hershfield is the consultant and the contract administrator for the project, whose roots date back a few years. In 2019, and again 2021, there were significant watermain breaks to the existing 40-year-old ductile iron pipe which caused major service disruptions, she says.

Those broken sections were exposed, isolated and repaired by regional staff. But that procedure also revealed that the watermain was in very poor condition and the region decided it had to be replaced.

But the scope of that initial project took on a wider dimension through a sharing agreement with the Town of Lincoln to replace and upsize the existing 1970s sewermain along the same stretch. Consisting of approximately 1.7 kilometres of PVC sanitary sewer pipe, new maintenance holes, and service laterals, the sewer is needed to meet the area’s future growth demands, says Jones.

It’s not uncommon for Niagara Region and its lower-tier municipal partners to twin or cost share on projects whenever feasible, she points out.

“This approach has provided several benefits including financial savings through economies of scale, improved infrastructure design and minimized public disruptions.”

Asked about the disruptions of this project to Beamsville residents and businesses, Jones acknowledges there have been lane closures during the watermain installation and, on a few occasions, Ontario Street had to be closed.

But every effort has been and is being made to minimize the inconvenience and that process will continue as the project now progresses into the sewer pipe stage, says Jones.

“We (the region/town) are in constant communication with residents and are working closely with the contractor to minimize the number and duration of road closures.”

Targeted completion date of the sewer installation is next spring, says Jones.