CORNER BROOK, N.L. — The storm sewer system on Charles Street has been a problem area during heavy rainfalls for the last few years and the City of Corner Brook was ready to do something about.
But Mother Nature intervened once again Tuesday and into today as rainwater that couldn’t get through the storm system flowed over the lower section of the road.
Rod Follett, the city’s superintendent of public works, was on the scene as crews worked on the issue.
The storm sewer system on the road includes a headwall and ditch at the top of the street, but Follett said the ditch has some debris in it which is getting into the system and then bringing up further down the road.
“We just can’t handle it right now,” he said of the amount of water that’s trying to enter the system.
As a result, the backed-up water sought the path of least resistance, which meant surging up though a manhole around the middle of the street and all over the road.
Follett said the city had a plan to fix the issue, but didn’t want to take it on while dealing with the snow that fell this past weekend.
He said the concern was with having the road opened up and snow getting on top of it while workers were trying to repair it.
The city actually had its permits in place to do the work today.
“Unfortunately, the weather came a little bit quicker than we were anticipating.”
The remedy, he explained, involved digging an interceptor ditch across a piece of empty land to funnel all the water. That will send the water into a brook behind the street, which goes into a headwall just down behind the city depot, and out into the system on Elizabeth Street.
“This is where it’s supposed to go anyways,” said Follett as he pointed to an area next to the manhole where the pipe for the water is located.
“And what’s happening is the water cannot get out through that pipe. The water is getting out, but not enough, so that’s why it’s surging,” he said.
“It looks bad, but really we got off good because of the extra storm system down below.”
Once the ditch is in place, he said, they’ll clean out the manhole.
This won’t be the only work that’s done in the area. Follett said more improvements to the storm system in the area are planned for the spring.
But with more rain coming, he said they were pressed to get the interceptor ditch in now.
As the water flowed down the street, Follett said there were a couple of properties at the lower end where driveways had some washout that would also be fixed.
In previous rainstorms, the city depot experienced flooding, but Follett said after an incident last year the city did some extra curb work around the depot so a lot of the water was now contained to the roadway.
As for concerns about the road itself, with so much water, Follett said it would be assessed by the engineering department and the city is prepared to remove the asphalt and redo the subgrade and pave it for the winter.
The flowing water wasn’t limited to Charles Street as it continued to flow down over the bottom of Elizabeth Street and onto Churchill Street.
The entrance to Union Street from Churchill Street was closed as it had some debris wash over it.
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