York Region’s new water servicing helps meet growth needs in Northeast Vaughan

The Regional Municipality of York (York Region) in Southern Ontario supplies drinking water to the City of Vaughan through the York Water System. The northeast section of Vaughan is a designated “white belt” area within York Region, accommodating provincially-approved population growth.

The existing water and wastewater systems are unable to accommodate the projected population growth. As a result, the Region established water and wastewater servicing areas to help identify the additional infrastructure needed to service the area's anticipated needs to the year 2051. 

The Northeast Vaughan water service area is located approximately from the King-Vaughan town boundary line to Teston Road and from Highway 27 to Dufferin Street. The preferred water servicing solution for this area consists of four main components: 

• Teston Road Pumping Station: a 33.5 million litres per day pumping station with a connection to the existing 1800 millimetre York-Peel Feedermain on Teston Road to supply water to new elevated water tanks 
• Jane Street Elevated Tank and Pumping Station: an 8.5 million litre elevated water storage tank and 3.8 million litre per day pumping station - a combined facility located on the same site 
• King Vaughan Elevated Tank: an 8.5 million litre elevated water storage tank, and
• Additional watermains to provide inter-connectivity between the pumping and storage facilities.

Associated Engineering is serving as the prime consultant, delivering studies, detailed design, and construction administration services. Project Manager, Andrew Moreton, tells us, "We've completed a Climate Change Adaptation study for the project. The report focuses on the environmental impacts of the various components of the project, their climate resiliency, and adaptation, resilience, and mitigation measures. Recommendations included methods to reduce construction emissions, voluntary emissions and energy reporting during construction and operation, and Envision Accreditation (decision is pending)."

Work completed to-date include permits and approvals, an addendum to the Municipal Class Environmental Assessment, utility coordination, and detailed design. Pre-qualification and tendering is ongoing for sections of the overall project. Andrew tells us, "So far, we've encountered a few challenges, including modifications to construction to limit impact to commercial developments being built and connecting to the York-Peel Feedermain, which is the main water feed into York Region from the adjacent Region of Peel." 

As part of the Environmental Assessment Addendum, we entered into a Knowledge Exchange with Curve Lake First Nation. Andrew explains, "The project has opened up the opportunity for the Curve Lake First Nation to collaborate with the York Region on a more strategic level."

The project also involves extensive internal and external stakeholder coordination. Andrew shares, "There are a large number of internal stakeholders within the Region, as we are constructing both facilities and linear works." In addition, developers want to move forward with their projects. The Region has signed an advance construction agreement which accelerated the construction of two of the contracts, which has changed project delivery.

Over 100 staff from across the company are involved on this project. Key staff include Andrew Moreton, Brandon Gorr, Cian McDermott, Axel Ouillet, Thomas Siuda, Marina Vera Zambrano, Dusan Fil, David Holyer, and Paul Shi.