Listen to the broadcast version of this story, which aired on Kootenay Morning on August 10, 2026:

By Jaime Frederick, Local Journalism Initiative

The City of Nelson is $7 million closer to having a new forcemain to carry its wastewater to the Grohman Narrows Treatment Plant.

The City was recently awarded a $7-million grant from the joint provincial-federal Build Communities Strong fund. The grant is expected to cover more than half of the projected $13.5-million budget to replace the existing forcemain, a 55-year-old pipe which carries wastewater from the lift station near the airport downstream to the Grohman Narrows Treatment Plant. 

The project is a top priority for city council and staff as the old pipe has developed several small leaks since 2021, some as recently as last spring. The leaks have all required emergency repairs to prevent raw sewage from seeping into the Kootenay River. 

Chris Johnson, the city’s General Manager of Community Planning, Climate and Infrastructure, says replacing the aging forcemain is necessary due to the leaks. He notes that the city is also already planning major renovations to the treatment plant in the near future.

“I think that we anticipated getting a little bit more life out of that [pipe],” said Johnson. “But nevertheless, we are in the process currently of planning for major upgrades of that treatment plant that could almost be considered building a new treatment plant because they will be so significant. If we were going to be doing all of that work to the treatment plant, and there were only a handful of years left, sort of an anticipated lifetime of that pipe, we were looking that it was going to be a component that we would be replacing in the near future anyway. So this just accelerated that timeline a little bit for us.”

Johnson says that while the city has been proactive in repairing the leaks to the old forcemain as they arise, it is much more difficult to project where the next ones might occur. He notes that the city monitors the pipe continuously to prevent further leakage into the river.

“We do a couple of things from a preventative side of things and a couple of things from a response side,” said Johnson. “We do investigate the pipe a couple times a year, where we send divers down and they go along the length of the pipe, just to see if there’s anything real obvious. And they check to make sure that everything’s good. But before that and and what happens all the time is we monitor how much flow goes into the pipe and how much flow we’re receiving at the plant. And so if there’s a delta, or a difference between those two, then we know that we have a challenge somewhere. So our monitoring systems are continuously looking at that and seeing how much is going into the pipe, how much is coming out of the pipe, and if there’s any difference, understanding that there’s a problem. That’s when we launch into our response plan that includes calling in commercial divers to dive the pipe, and have a look along it. We’ve also, in the last couple of times, those same companies have used ROVs, remote operated vehicles, to go down and have a look. “

Johnson says the project is currently in the design phase, with construction anticipated to begin next year. He notes that the project is anticipated to be fairly straightforward but the construction and placement of a new pipe does present a few engineering challenges.

“The complexities will come  in tying in to the existing land portion,” said Johnson. “So from the airport station to basically the edge edge of the water, tying it in there. And then, when that aquatic portion comes out on land, the wastewater treatment side as well. There’s obvious complexities in ensuring that it is bedded in the appropriate place under quite a depth of water, making sure that it’s anchored appropriately, making sure that it doesn’t move, it can’t sag, it can’t have anything that will cause any issues in the future. So we’ve already done a lot of work to understand the routing of it and understand the stream bed or the river bed along that route.”

Johnson adds that once construction begins in 2027, the city hopes the new pipe will be operational within a year. 

“We anticipate that once construction starts, it’s not like a multi-year process, it should be wrapped up well within a year, is what we anticipate, ” he said. “We want to get the pipe replaced so that we can make sure that we aren’t  having any more leaks, and make sure that we’re delivering all the wastewater directly to the wastewater treatment plant.”

Nelson’s forcemain project is one of 54 infrastructure projects approved under the Build Communities Strong Fund. For more information visit the city’s website.

Photo credit: Matthew Miles Photos/City of Nelson

Forcemain Grohman Narrows Treatment Plant nelson Sewage Wastewater