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March 22nd marks World Water Day, an annual United Nations observance that celebrates water and raises awareness of the 2 billion people currently living without access to safe water. A core focus of World Water Day is to inspire action towards the Sustainable Development Goal: Water and sanitation for all by 2030.
The Storm Sewer Review and Master Plan (SSRMP) program is a series of projects the City of Moncton undertook beginning in 2000 to analyze all its sewer systems - storm, sanitary and combined sewers - to identify high risk areas of flooding. Once identified, recommendations for system improvements are evaluated, cost estimates prepared, and an actionable plan created.
The City has completed 8 phases of the SSRMP program so far and is presently working on its 9th. It anticipates that a 10th (possibly the final) one will be awarded in 2022. Our Englobe team worked with a group of consultants to complete the first four phases of the program, and then completed phases 7 and 8 on our own.
The SSRMP program resulted from city-wide flood incidents that took place in the late 90s. The highest risk areas (older areas of the city) were studied first and with each phase of the study an additional area was evaluated, and recommendations were prioritized and added to a master list of improvements that would reduce or eliminate the risk of flooding. Many of the capital projects resulting from each phase of the study have seen or will see the separation of sanitary flows from combined sewers, resulting in fewer incidents of combined sewer overflows to the receiving watercourses in the city and reducing the overall flow volume to the tri-community’s wastewater treatment plant. Many of the recommendations in each of the phases resulted in other capital projects that have now been constructed, further reducing flood incidents.
Making the invisible visible
The program’s vast scope required the topographic pick-up of hundreds of manholes, the assessment of hundreds of kilometres of pipe, and the construction of large complex computer models to evaluate the system within each of the study areas.
“Englobe’s hydraulic modeler, Shawn Burke, has developed and introduced many efficiencies to the model building process on the Phase 7 and 8 studies that allowed our team to simplify how the model is built and reduce the number of human-related errors encountered on previous phases,” noted Lisa J. Grasse, Englobe Senior Civil/Municipal Engineer, “because of these studies and other hydraulic modeling projects, Shawn now has an exceptional reputation with the City and our clients in the field of hydraulic modeling and analysis.”
Englobe has been successful on a variety of projects for the City of Moncton that required hydraulic modeling and system analysis including the design of the replacement of the Jonathan Creek CN culvert for the City of Moncton and CN, and the design of the Jones Lake Spillway and West Main Street culvert replacement project. These were two significant projects that removed restrictions to the downstream outfall of the Jonathan Creek watercourse to the Petitcodiac River.
“I’ve been very proud of Englobe’s involvement in this program and others like it. They drive significant investment into important infrastructure, resulting in meaningful improvements to our communities’ quality of life.” added Shawn.
To learn more about World Water Day, check out the 2022 UN World Water Development Report, which provides decision-makers with the knowledge and tools to formulate and implement sustainable water policies. It also offers best practices and in-depth analyses to stimulate ideas and actions for better stewardship in the water sector and beyond.