A water valve replacement has meant lane closures and bright orange signs on the west side of the Victoria Street bridge in Trail for the last couple of days.
Public Works crews have been seen digging a big hole on the side of the highway and it is all to expose the water main delivering water to West Trail.
After a few days of prep work, workers shut off the water Thursday and replaced the 12-inch pipe valve. The first step was to find the spot they needed to dig.
“Last week, they were trying to find the valve,” said Larry Abenante manager of Public Works with the city.
“It is a very critical valve in the system and it was fairly old.”
Once the valve was located, next came a good flushing.
“What we will do is make sure the reservoirs are full, then we shut off the valve closer to A&W, then we go to the other side of the bridge and shut off a valve there,” said Abenante.
“We go to a hydrant to drain the line and once that is done, we put the saw to the pipe and cut. The line across the bridge won’t have any water in it.”
The replacement valve is all ready to go for installation, says Abenante, with two pieces of pipe already attached to each end. The actual installation of the valve can take up to a full day, simply because of the size of the piece.
Abenante says once the pedestrian bridge is built, replacing a valve bringing water to West Trail won’t be such a production.
“We are going to do the pedestrian crossing here in the fall hopefully,” he said. “Then there will be a water line crossing that too. Once we have that, we will have two water lines crossing the river, but right now we only have the one. If anything ever goes wrong with it, there will be trouble.”