While environmentalists, members of federal opposition parties, and some economists continue to push back against the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project (TMX), work is full-speed ahead and has arrived in Chilliwack.
From digging trenches and laying pipe where the right-of-way cross Kinkora Golf Course to surveying on some farmland, the construction is at varying stages on the route across the city.
First announced a decade ago, the project to twin the existing pipeline from the Alberta oils sands to Burnaby went from an estimated cost of $3.8 billion owned by a private company to a $21.4-billion price tag owned by the government of Canada.
This video shows clips and still images from work underway in late June and early July:
The TMX is now 50 per cent complete with mechanical completion expected by the third quarter of 2023.
“That means we have a complete pipe that’s welded together in the ground, with all the infrastructure that’s needed to support that pipe,” TMX senior community liaison Kate Stebbings told Chilliwack city council in an update back in September 2021.
At that time, mechanical completion was estimated to be done by December 2022.
READ MORE: Trans Mountain reps deliver details on Chilliwack-area pipeline work starting this fall
As of May 31, 2022, there were approximately 13,550 people working on the project, according to a spokesperson.
While much of the work is still preliminary involving surveying and staking, the company has dug trenches and lay pipe where the route crosses Kinkora Golf Course. The route hits the course from the east crossing the fifth fairway and leaves the course near the 18th tee box.
Michels Canada is the contractor for the construction and many people may have seen their vehicles around town.
There are nearly 50 residential properties in Sardis where the existing route and the TMX route run through back yards. There are 23 properties on or adjacent to Roseberry and Montcalm roads just west of Watson Elementary School, and 24 yards on Watson Road, Canterbury Drive, Ashbury Place, Connaught Place, Deerfield Crescent, and Cumberland Avenue.
The pipeline route also crosses the back fields at both Watson Elementary and Vedder Middle School. The company will be focused on open-cut construction at those locations in July and August, before the return of school.
The route crosses Lickman Road and Keith Wilson right near the intersection of those roads.
After crossing the Vedder River it runs under the Browne Creek Wetlands. It then skirts Vedder Mountain and runs through more farm fields in Yarrow before the route goes into Abbotsford.
The Vedder River is one of two locations where the TMX path diverts from the existing route.
As for the technique to get a pipeline underneath a river, they will be different at different waterways in the Fraser Valley.
“Trans Mountain originally planned one long horizontal directional drill (HDD) crossing for the Vedder River,” a spokesperson told The Progress. “However, results of a geotechnical investigation indicated unfavourable conditions for this type of construction method. Therefore, we’ll cross below the Vedder River using a direct pipe trenchless construction method which is better suited to these conditions.
“The HDD technique is being used for the Fraser River and we are using an open-cut technique for the Coquihalla River in the District of Hope.”
As part of the project, TMX signed community benefit agreements with municipalities along the route. In Chilliwack, the city is receiving a pedestrian bridge across the Vedder River.
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