A year after torrential rains flooded homes and businesses, the Town of Lakeshore is working to avoid a repeat of that event.
On Monday, the town began flushing sewer lines and sticking a closed circuit camera through the drains and pipes looking for leaks and any type of damage.
"This is a means to continue to improve the infrastructure and to make sure that it's operating properly," says Kevin Girard, manager of environmental services. “Just ensure that the sewers downstream from here are going to operate at their best ability."
Mike Jones, owner of Black Rock Consulting, says the whole objective of this exercise is to get in there, find the leaks and plug them.
The goal is to improve sewer capacity when major rain events happen and avoid having storm water cross into the sanitary lines.
"This isn't the operation where the repair is made,” says Jones. “This is an exploratory step that we're doing, once the videos are completed, they're looked at, a repair recommendation is made and then a different crew comes down on that truck and they do those repairs."
While crews work predominately between Manning Road and Puce, there's also a subsidy program for back water valves, sump pumps and down spout disconnections that the Town of Lakeshore offers.
"We haven't had as many residents come to us in hopes of getting this program,” says Girard. “It's available, there's lot of money there for the residents to take advantage of this program and we'd really like to see some more people contact the engineering department at the Town of Lakeshore."
For a small fee, people can also have their private lines inspected with a CCTV camera.
"Our residents have a responsibility on their private side as well to make sure that everything is operating properly and it's in the town's best interests and residents best interests to make sure that's happening," says Girard.
