You Asked is a regular NewmarketToday feature. We’ll do our best to get the answers to your most pressing questions about what’s going on in Newmarket. Email [email protected] and please include the words You Asked in the subject line.
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You asked:
Newmarket photographer, Greg King, who is a regular contributor to NewmarketToday, noticed what appears to be a recording device on a pole at the west side of Fairy Lake. It seems to be aimed in the direction of the nearby force main twinning work site. He wondered what it is and what it is used for.
Here’s the answer:
The apparatus is, indeed, a noise and vibration monitoring device for the force main twinning work area at Fairy Lake, according to Lauren Stephanoff, a design technologist in the Region of York’s capital planning and delivery department for environmental services.
“We do this to ensure regulatory compliance and conduct baseline comparisons,” Stephanoff said.
The Fairy Lake work site is part of the York Durham sewage system force main twinning project, which involves the following:
- Building a new twinned force main to move wastewater from the Newmarket pumping station to the Aurora pumping station;
- Building a new twinned force main to move wastewater from the Bogart Creek pumping station to the new York Durham sewage system force main and;
- Modifications to the Newmarket and Bogart Creek pumping stations.
The project is on schedule and, once complete in fall 2021, will see a new 5.2-kilometre major sewage pipe installed or twinned alongside the one existing pipe running through Newmarket that officials say is necessary to ensure the health and safety of the community and environment.
The $110.6-million project is billed as “significant and urgent” to Newmarket’s wastewater system and is being led by the Regional Municipality of York.
When a sewer is not twinned, the community is at risk of a disruption of service, such as a sewage pipe break because this puts the local environment at risk and the sewer would be taken out of service until repaired, the region says.
Since 2019, the region has completed the final microtunnel drive from Madsen’s Greenhouse to Queen and Charles streets. The 1,135-metre drive is the longest microtunnel drive to date in Canada, and the longest curved microtunnel drive in North America.
In less than one year, all seven of the project’s microtunnelling drives have been completed and total 5.6 kilometres.
The new force main begins at the Newmarket sewage pumping station at 380 Bayview Parkway and travels 5.2 kilometres south, through downtown Newmarket, ending just north of the Aurora Sewage pumping station.
The new Bogart Creek force main will consist of 530 metres of force main installed between the Fairy Lake work area, across Prospect Street, to York Region’s Bogart Creek sewage pumping station.
For more information, visit here.
