Flushed with pride, City officials lifted the lid Tuesday on their newly constructed sewer overflow tank in Bellevue Park.
Reporters and politicians (both having considerable expertise in handling the stuff that the tank will handle) were invited to tour the massive underground storage facility.
Designed to contain overflow from sanitary sewers that until now has been discharged untreated directly into the St. Mary's River, the $7 million concrete tank has a capacity of 12,000 cubic metres. (By SooToday's calculation, that's equivalent to the contents of more than 71,000 bathtubs. Or, if you prefer, two million toilet flushes.)
The facility is currently being tested.
On Tuesday, two planned flushes took place while the visitors were in the tank, but alas, they did not purge the part of the facility where the reporters, photographers and politicians were standing.
Considerable effort has been expended to make the tank as unobtrusive as possible.
A parking lot is being built on top of it, and a "tub-scrubber" has been installed to ensure that no odours are detectable in the neighbourhood.
It's expected the overflow tank will be commissioned and fully operational within a couple of weeks.
A turd's-eye view
Sewage overflow tank #1 Sewage overflow tank #2 Sewage overflow tank #3 First flush fails to purge politicians They're building a parking lot on the tank-top