Weather helps construction of lake outlet

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/08/2011 (5552 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Crews attempting to build a $100-million emergency outlet from Lake St. Martin have had luck on their side so far, but provincial officials say they won’t know for a couple of weeks whether their ambitious Nov. 1 completion target is achievable.

On the positive side: The sun has shone, barges have successfully ferried the first dozen or so pieces of heavy equipment to the construction site and some sections of the proposed eight-kilometre channel route appear to be drier than first thought.

On the negative side: Lots of potential problems could still be uncovered.

Ron Weatherburn, executive director of construction and maintenance with Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation, said seven large excavators, three bulldozers and a rock truck are already working on the outlet.

At the same time, survey work continues, bush is being cleared and preparations are being made to build a work camp at the construction site. (Right now, workers — there are 50 so far at the site — are ferried in daily by boat from Benson’s Big Rock Camp & Campground eight kilometres away.)

“As far as mobilizing equipment, it’s ramping up very quickly now,” Weatherburn said Wednesday.

The Selinger government announced July 26 that it would proceed with the outlet from the east side of Lake St. Martin to Big Buffalo Lake; it will later be extended to Lake Winnipeg. The 90-metre-wide channel would allow maximum operation this winter of the Fairford River water control structure, which drains water from Lake Manitoba into Lake St. Martin.

Communities along both Lake St. Martin and Lake Manitoba have been severely affected by flooding. The government is hoping the channel will draw down the level of both lakes by two to three feet by spring.

Once construction is fully ramped up in a couple of weeks, the government figures there will be 50 big pieces of equipment and 150 workers building the channel. The job is complicated by bog-like conditions. Workers need to drain the land as they construct the channel.

So far, they’ve been lucky to avoid any major rainfall, and they’ve been buoyed by the fact that at least some sections of the channel may not be as tough to build as earlier thought.

“We still haven’t gone through the whole entire area yet, so we could still run into problems,” Weatherburn cautioned. “But we have found some areas that are drier than we’d expected, which is very positive for us.”

One Winnipeg contractor (Hugh Munro Construction) and two Interlake companies (Triline Construction and Sigfusson Northern) are doing the work. They’re attempting to do in months what would normally take years to complete. Since the channel is viewed as an emergency project, normal environmental impact studies are being rushed or curtailed.

Weatherburn said area First Nations people are being employed in clearing bush, assisting with surveying and setting up camps.

Emergency Measures Minister Steve Ashton said Wednesday that he has been impressed with the “can-do” attitude shown by everybody involved in the project, but it’s still too early to tell whether the Nov. 1 completion target can be reached. If construction carries on through the winter, the government won’t be able to lower the lakes as rapidly as planned.

“We’ll have a better sense of the lay of the land in the next couple of weeks,” Ashton said.

Once the Lake St. Martin outlet is completed, the province will undertake a second, $60-million construction project aimed at further lowering Lake Manitoba. This will be done by building a bypass channel off the Fairford River, west of Lake St. Martin. About 2.5 kilometres long, the channel will extend north of the Fairford River water control structure and improve the river’s capacity.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca