Region looks to redevelop and twin Aurora well by 2017

October 9, 2013 · 0 Comments

By Brock Weir

Wells serving the Yonge Street Aquifer have been underperforming when it comes to pumping – and Aurora could be part of the solution.

The Region of York is leaning towards installing a new well in Aurora to augment existing water supplies, twinned with the existing Regional well on the southwest quadrant of St. John’s Sideroad near Yonge Street.

The decision to twin the Aurora pump in question was the result of lengthy consultation and analysis of wells currently tapping the Yonge Street aquifer and how to get them back up to snuff. A review period to the proposals is scheduled over the fall and winter, with the next steps ready to get into gear sometime in the summer of 2014.

“Aquifers are permeable sand and gravel, almost like underground lakes with support,” explains Patty Quackenbush, Consultant Project Manager for AECOM, the consultancy firm retained by the Region to carry out the study, noting the primary purpose of the project is to recapture “lost capacity” of the existing wells.

The maximum amount of water permitted to pump from the Yonge Street Aquifer is in the neighbourhood of 87.7 million litres a year. Analysis on select wells in the Region have shown this has deteriorated down to 82.5 million due to wear and tear.

“It is a function of the wells being old,” she says. “These are all over 20 years old and some are over 35. We all decline in performance as we get older. Some of that can be regained and restoring was one of the options we looked at, but that is not always a permanent fix.

“The intent is not to increase the overall capacity of the Yonge Street aquifer, but just to provide some redundancies so there is backup.”
According to Ms. Quackenbush, a number of possible locations were investigate for solutions including sites in Georgina and East Gwillimbury, but sites near the Yonge and St. John’s Well, as well with a new location near Green Lane further north rose to the top.

“The Aurora site is just really an incremental increase over what is currently being captured in that site,” said Ms. Quackenbush. “It wouldn’t be reasonable to assume we could get another big gusher of a well adjacent to the well. It is optimising the availability of the resource there.”

Also administering the public information session held last Wednesday at the Aurora Cultural Centre was senior project manager Tammy Silverstone. She said she expects the Region to move into a more detailed design of the St. John’s Sideroad well house within the next two months, as it will have to either be expanded or rebuilt to accommodate the new operations, with a target operational date in 2017.

“We’re pretty confident we’re not going to affect shallow or surface waters or shallow wells in the area,” she says. “The next round of testing will monitor any private wells we have in the area. These are all things we have to conclusively study and answer, but based on the information we have today, we think we can sustainably add new wells to the system.

“Any effects [such as noise to nearby neighbours] we would be looking to mitigate. There are lots of options for noise control. These generators will typically make a lot of noise. We generally try to enclose those and create soundproofing. Our objective will be to mitigate any potential noise effects.”