Sinkhole A Mystery

Jun 22, 2018 | 11:33 AM

PRINCE GEORGE – The City is hoping to get to the bottom of the sinkhole mystery at Winnipeg and Carney Streets. Today, crews will have capped off a water main that is eight feet underground to restore water to residences and businesses in the area. That pipe will be removed and a much larger hole to get at a storm sewer pipe that is buried roughly twenty feet deep.

“The pipe is an old corrugated steel pipe, which is kind of like a culvert material,” explains Dave Dyer, the General Manager of Engineering and Public Works. “It’s 11 feet wide by eight feet high and you can imagine how big a flow that pipe will handle. But there’s a lot of silt in that pipe and we feel, over the decades, it has deteriorated to the point where, now, gravel is getting in when we’re tried to repair the other sinkholes in the past.”

It’s also another example of infrastructure put in during the 1960’s is deteriorating. Another example of that kind of deterioration is the Willowcale Road, which turned into a massive replacement job for the City. The City has also replaced culverts on North Nechako Road and Aberdeen Road near Art Knapp’s. Those replacement costs were around a million dollars. Dyer says this is not a replacement project, but a repair job. But, until he can get a closer look at the problem, the bill for this fix is just as much a mystery as the cause of the sinkhole.

“Here we’re not even sure what we’re up against, right? We’ve been talking about the silting material which contaminated as well; it’s inside this main,” says Dyer. “We might have to look at other options or maybe just abandoning [the pipe] and putting in another storm sewer system in.”