Stench from sewer pipe leaking near Science World should go away soon: Vancouver

The City of Vancouver says the sewer pipe that leaked and caused a foul smell near Science World should have a bypass in place by the end of next week.

Earlier this month, the city said the stench was the result of seawater mixing with sewage that emerged from the site of a broken sewer main. The city had said it would take three weeks to repair.

Vancouver’s general manager of engineering, Lon LaClaire, said in the past that the leak was no cause for concern, but it has been more than three weeks that the pipe on Terminal Avenue continues to leak.

LaClaire tells CityNews on Tuesday that designing the bypass is not easy.

“The challenge for us has been actually designing the bypass, the bypass pipe, and getting the equipment necessary to, kind of, install that, and that has taken longer than we had hoped,” he said.

Unlike most sewer pipes, this one is under pressure to force waste up to a nearby sewer station. It cannot be turned off without backing up the entire system.

There are trucks and other equipment on site trying to mitigate the raw sewage smell that people are still smelling while walking by.

LaClaire says the bypass will allow them to shut off the broken pipe and stop the flow of waste.

“That can, kind of, be in place for a good amount of time. It will actually be a buried pipe under Main Street and then will be at the surface at its connections so people will see it, but it won’t, you know, be nearly as disruptive,” he said.

City engineers say this incident is unusual. This pipe is only 25 years old while its service life is supposed to be 100 years. A failure like this in the pipe is something that needs to be investigated and may mean a redesign for the sewer system in that area.

“What that will allow us to do is actually take the time we need to do the repair. To, kind of like, look at the full extent, maybe look at what the cause is, what kind of result would create this failure, how it fails,” LaClaire said.

LaClaire says that the stench, wastewater and vacuum trucks, should be gone by the end of next week when the bypass is in place, but a timeline on when repairs on the original pipe will be completed is not confirmed.

-With files from Hana Mae Nassar and Charles Brockman.