Expansion of Milliken Reservoir and Pumping Station supports growth and enhances water supply for City of Toronto and Region of York
 |
| View of footing work progressing on the new pump station |
Located in the Town of Markham, north of Toronto, the Milliken
Reservoir was constructed and placed into service in 1975. The
original pumping station was built in the 1980's to address the
potable water needs of the north end of the City of Toronto and, at
the same time, the sparsely populated Town of Markham in the Region
of York. The reservoir provides fire protection, system balancing, and
emergency reserve storage for the City of Toronto and the Region of
York, and receives water from the City of Toronto's four water treatment
plants via a transmission network and pumping stations.
Population growth has necessitated the addition of storage and pumping
capacity, which would also permit existing reservoir cells and
pumps to be taken off–line for routine maintenance. The expansion of
the Milliken Pumping Station and Reservoir is necessary to allow the
City of Toronto to meet the recommendations of the Toronto-York
Region Joint Optimization Study to double its capacity in order to
support population growth projections and enhance water supply. The
City of Toronto is required to supply an increased capacity to the
Regional Municipality of York by January 1, 2011.
The City of Toronto identified the need for an additional 134 million
litres (ML) storage to double the capacity of the existing Milliken
Reservoir, together with associated pumping station upgrades and
expansion. A Class Environmental Assessment was filed in April 2007,
triggering the expansion project. The expanded facility will serve the
current customer base and additional development needs in the
Region of York.
Associated Engineering was selected as the design consultant for
the project. Our role was to complete predesign, detailed design, and
tender documentation preparation, and to provide contract administration
services during construction. Project Manager Ed Salenieks,
P.Eng., advises, "The project has moved into construction, with a
requirement for two full-time senior site representatives, one each
dedicated to the pumping station and the reservoir."
"Associated Engineering really provided team work on this project,"
Ed reports. He explains, "Our British Columbia office was instrumental
in conducting the seismic analyses that led to the innovative structural
design in Toronto. The geotechnical investigations indicated that the
reservoir should be seismically designed to comply with the Building
Code. Based on that requirement, the new reservoir is a fully seismic
compliant, post-disaster structure. The existing reservoir was a conventional
design, and, as such, special interconnections and physical
separation of the new and old reservoirs was required. Bob Hawboldt's
group in Saskatoon conducted the transient analysis, Bill Harvey from
Kelowna assembled many of the technical memoranda and, as well,
conducted quality reviews, and key staff from other offices were
involved throughout the design process as well."
The new pumping station is set to be complete in November 2010,
while the new reservoir will see final completion in April 2011. |
