City officials are studying ways to rein in the runaway costs of installing huge, underground tanks in Centretown designed to keep sewage out of the Ottawa River.
The Combined Sewer Storage Tunnel is the centrepiece of the Ottawa River Action Plan, a series of 17 projects launched in 2009 designed to protect the river from sewage and storm water spills after a series of downpours and mechanical failures caused pollution overflow into the waterway.
Two sewer tunnels will be built under the Centretown area, beginning in 2015.
The core tunnel will run between Lebreton Flats and Rockcliffe Park and will intersect with a tunnel under Kent and Slater streets.
These two tunnels total six kilometres in length, providing 42,000 cubic metres of storage.
The project was expected to cost $140-million in 2009, but that estimate was adjusted to $170-million in 2012. Due to inflation, the cost of the project is projected to rise an additional $15-$20 million by the time it’s completed in 2018.
According to Dixon Weir, general manager of the city’s environmental services division, increasing land costs are driving the inflation.
"This project is not static," says Weir. "The increase in cost is the result of the project moving from its conceptual design to projected inflation and the completion of its environmental assessment and its functional design."
The city is seeking one-third funding contributions from both the federal and provincial governments for the construction of the tunnel, according to Weir. The City of Ottawa will provide the remaining one-third.
However, Wayne Newell, general manager of the city’s infrastructure services department, says until a stable budget is complete, obtaining funding from the provincial and federal governments will be difficult.
"When we started this project, we were only figuring out estimates. The problem with providing numbers is that people gravitate to them, because it’s the cost that they relate to.".
Newell says environmental services staff would draft a budget that accounts for the cost of inflation and addresses any additional, projected construction expenses.
Meredith Brown, executive director of Ottawa Riverkeeper, says the Ottawa River Action Plan is crucial to its clean up strategy and should move forward with the tunnel project.
Newell said a concrete overview of the project at each stage, provided by environmental services, would help Ottawa residents comprehend the importance of the project and its funding.