Preliminary work is underway in Haro Woods on the Capital Regional District’s attenuation tank project.
In November, the CRD’s Seaterra Program Commission awarded a consulting contract for the design of the wastewater tank, including geotechnical and environmental work on the site.
“Once our consultant gets all the geotechnical and environmental information, he’ll start doing some preliminary design layouts of where the tank might be located to have the least impact on the environment,” said Malcolm Cowley, Seaterra’s project manager for conveyance infrastructure.
Multiple design concepts are expected to be shared with the public as early as March.
“If we can locate the tank in an ideal location to minimize the amount of trees and vegetation that has to be removed, that’s certainly what our goal is,” Cowley said. “Eventually, once the tank is complete, the site will be restored back to a natural woodland.”
The 5,000-cubic-metre attenuation tank will be completely buried underground. It will be used to store wastewater during peak stormwater flow conditions, typically in the winter, so sewage doesn’t overflow from pipes onto the ocean and beaches off Saanich and Oak Bay.
Cowley says construction is expected to begin in fall of 2014, and should last a year.
Haro Woods, an 8.5-hectare forest, is now 90 per cent protected, after Saanich and the CRD completed a land swap in July 2013.
Under that deal, the CRD gave Saanich 4.33 hectares of forest in exchange for 1.5 ha to house the attenuation tank.
For more information, visit seaterraprogram.ca.
kslavin@saanichnews.com
