Capital Regional District warns of foul smells as it trucks sewage amid line blockage

Crews work on a sewage line in the Capital Regional District.

Officials with the Capital Regional District have been trucking liquified solids to a treatment facility due to a blockage in an underground conveyance line.

“We’ve had support from so many different groups on trying to resolve this,” says CRD infrastructure and water services general manager, Alicia Fraser.

The general manager says crews have been trying to find a blockage in an underground pipeline from the McLoughlin Point Wastewater Treatment Plant. The conveyance line spans roughly 20 kilometres, all the way to the region’s residual solids facility at Hartland Landfill.

Fraser says planned, annual maintenance work was underway when a capsule-shaped plug called a pig got stuck. It was being used to scrape debris off the sides of the residual solids conveyance line—and teams have been trying to pinpoint the pig’s exact location since Friday, Nov. 14.

“It’s likely stopped due to a buildup of debris,” she says. “We’ll have a better idea once we actually locate the pig.”

The CRD and contracted crews have been feeding cameras into the line and think they’re close to pinpointing the location around the Gorge and Tillicum area of Esquimalt.

“In the meantime, we are needing to transport all of our solids from the McLoughlin Wastewater Treatment Plant up to the residual treatment facility and we are using many, many VAC trucks in order to do that,” adds Fraser.

While the ongoing work is underway, the CRD is thanking the public for its support. Neighbourhoods have been forewarned they might notice foul smells, more noise and traffic delays as a result.

Staff said Wednesday they hope to resolve the situation in the next 24 hours, and they don’t know how much the emergency repairs are going to cost or whether anything could have prevented the problem.