[All] Dewatering and remediation

[Kevin Thomason]

Susan,

Most of the dewatering around the Region that I am aware of is for underground construction of sewer lines, water pipes, underground hydro, etc.  For example there are extensive amounts of construction happening along the entire LRT to relocate all of the underground utilities away from the future tracks so if there is a water main break or such in the future the tracks won't have to be dug up.

In many places this digging and construction can happen just fine because it is above the water table.  However, some places such as near the Kitchener Transit Terminal on Charles Street the water table is much closer to the surface and extensive pumping has to occur so they can dig down and not have their holes and trenches flooded by water during the construction and placement of underground utilities.

The worst case of dewatering I have seen to date was along Wideman road on the Northwest Corner of Waterloo in 2008 when 147 wells were drilled to drain millions of liters of groundwater away from new sewer and water lines for the Columbia Forest III/Deer Crossing subdivisions.  So much water was pumped out of a 800m stretch of roadway that they couldn't dispose of it all and they flooded area neighbourhoods and storm water management ponds.  

While the construction dragged on for four months due to delays and cost overruns from hitting so much water, once the pumps were shut off and the wells decomissioned it appears that the area watertable has rebounded okay.  Unfortunately, after all that disruption and hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers money spent, the pipes have never been used and sidewalks and streetlights lead to nowhere as the subdivision servicing plans were changed and the City of Waterloo finally listened to our suggestions to service things internally from existing utilities.

Also, I don't know much about it but judging by the massive amounts of very unique and extremely expensive equipment on site there is some massive dewatering happening along New Dundee Road (near Reichert Drive) in the extreme south of Kitchener to put in services and perhaps even major Regional water/utilitiy infrastructure.  This is a very environmentally sensitive area crucial for our drinking water supplies that has been targetted for significant future development that this dewatering has been happening for several months as they appear to be working very very deep in the ground.

Hope this helps.  Let me know if you need any photos of the Wideman Road fiasco.

Cheers,
Kevin.

----------------------------

On Jun 12, 2015, at 10:51 AM, Susan Koswan <susankoswan at execulink.com> wrote:

> Still researching for the “Big Water” bottled water extraction issue in Elora and looking through this GRCA report. http://www.grandriver.ca/water/2006_wateruse_4.pdf
>  
> Permits are issued for vast amounts of water for dewatering and remediation (figure 7, page 27 in the above report) – actually the amount for bottled water pales in comparison. I’m finding it very difficult to get the big picture of who’s taking what and how much, because all the reports keep listing who is NOT included in their tables. (firefighting for eg)
>  
> Wikipedia dewatering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewatering
> I haven’t found out what remediation actually refers to.
>  
> Help?
> Susan K
>  
>  
> _______________________________________________
> All mailing list
> All at gren.ca
> http://gren.ca/mailman/listinfo/all_gren.ca

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20150612/264700de/attachment.html>