A blocked sewer line that runs from Turner Valley to Black Diamond is costing taxpayers as Town officials struggle to find the cause.
The blockage was discovered in October after the PVC pipe that funnels sewage to Black Diamond’s treatment plant and lagoons was shut down by the Westend Regional Sewage Service Commission in September due to a break in the line on Foothills County land between the neighbouring communities.
The sewage was then diverted to a distribution line built from government disaster relief funds following the 2013 flood (to move the line out of the floodplain in the event of another high water event) while the leak was repaired and area remediated, said Todd Sharpe, Turner Valley chief administrative officer.
Once the situation was fixed, attempts to transfer sewage through the older line were unsuccessful due to a blockage in the approximately 30-year-old line, Sharpe said.
“We’re not sure how the blockage came into play, whether the material in the inside of the line dried out and blocked the line or what, but there was no blockage in the line prior to the sewer line leak,” he said. “Westend has worked since the fall with engineers to try to find the blockage and they’ve been unsuccessful.”
Approximately $12,000 has been spent to date on trying to find the source of the blockage, according to Laurie McCreary-Burke, secretary treasurer of Westend.
She said Westend plans to spend an additional $6,000 to try to locate and dislodge the blockage.
While the new line is serving its purpose, Sharpe said it costs $40,000 to $50,000 more annually to operate than the older line as additional chemical injections are required to offset the accumulation of H2S gas.
“As a result of the layout and the size of the new line there’s a tendency to produce H2S gas due to sewage pooling,” he said. “In order to mitigate that we have to inject chemicals in the line to minimize the H2S gas. The old line was in a good state of repair and the cost to operate and maintain it was much less.”
The difficulty in finding the blockage lies with an abundance of elbows, or bends, in the sewage pipeline, Sharpe said.
“Tactics such as digging and flushing the line are very difficult because there are too many bends in the line,” he said. “The amount that Westend has spent on behalf of both municipalities to try to find this blockage, they’ve reached a limit. They’ve reached a point where they decided they’ve done enough.”
Although each Town’s financial contribution to Westend is based on their respective proportion of annual sewage flow, Sharpe said the cost to remediate the issue could become solely that of Turner Valley taxpayers.
“We will wait to hear the results of this last remediation that Westend will undertake - I’m not sure the timelines on that - and we’ll go from there,” he said. “If we find it then we have to remediate it so there is even more expense to dig up the line, clear the block, replace the line.”
