Metro Vancouver Regional District is getting ready to replace a 90-year-old water main in Burnaby, but it’ll mean traffic disruptions to neighbourhoods along Imperial Street.
The plan is to replace a 3.4-kilometre-long stretch of the existing Central Park Main, starting work in the last quarter of 2023.
The existing water main, built in the 1930s, is experiencing “quite a bit of leakage” and has reached the end of its service life. It needs to be replaced and upsized to meet growing demand, according to a Metro Vancouver presentation to Burnaby city council June 10.
The new water main will “improve resiliency of the water supply system for the city and the region,” ensure the delivery of clean and safe drinking water, increase capacity, and meet current seismic standards, according to Ben Suleiman, lead senior engineer at Metro Vancouver.
The next phase of the water main replacement runs along Imperial Street from Telford Avenue to Griffiths Avenue and Elwell Street.
The water main will be a welded steel pipe 1.2 metres in diameter (four feet), which is “quite large” compared to a typical municipal utility, which is about 20 to 30 centimetres in diameter (eight to 12 inches). The regional pipe requires a larger work zone and trench.
Traffic impact
The section east of the intersection at Kingsway and Imperial Street will be “very difficult to undertake the work and keep the road open at the same time,” Suleiman said.
He noted the area is crowded with existing utilities and the available corridor for the water main is “very limited.”
“There isn’t much room to maintain an open lane of traffic,” he said.
Suleiman said the construction wouldn’t close the whole Imperial section all at once, but the closures would be a 200-to-300-metre-long rolling work zone which would move “almost daily.”
He noted most of the properties in the neighbourhood have back lane access, but acknowledged it would be an inconvenience.
Metro Vancouver and the city are still in discussions regarding the traffic management plans for both the east and west sections of the water main replacement along Imperial. The west side is expected to be less challenging than the east side.
The replacement phase east of Kingsway is expected to last until early 2026.
Previous phases
The new water main project has been planned in three phases over several years “to reduce the impact on the community.”
The section of Salisbury and 18th Street will be completed this summer; the Maywood section near Central Park was completed in 2020.
The Central Park Main is about 12 km long, running from Central Park in Burnaby to Westburnco Park in New West. Burnaby’s stretch is about seven km, while New West’s is about five km.
In addition to the water main, Metro Vancouver is also building 700 metres of city water main, on behalf of the city, and another 1.7 km of communications conduit to limit the disturbance to the neighbourhood, according to Suleiman.
Metro Vancouver is still in discussions with the city and consultants about the traffic management plans and will engage with the public as plans are finalized.
