Prepping for the next geyser: Blue collars learn the pipes at Montreal’s aqueduct training centre

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In the space of one lamentable August week, Montreal saw a record rainfall that overwhelmed the city’s sewage system and flooded thousands of homes, followed seven days later by a broken water main that geysered skyward for hours before being brought under control.

The closely spaced catastrophes generated increased interest in the state of the city’s underground water network and how it’s being managed, as the realization that climate change-fuelled flooding events have become part of our new reality.

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On Tuesday, The Gazette toured the city’s one-of-a-kind waterworks maintenance training facility, dubbed Maxim’eau, where city workers are schooled on mock aqueduct systems that mirror the ones found underground, learning how to make repairs on an aging system in a dangerous environment.

Opened in 2018, the centre located in Anjou was designed by city of Montreal employees, who felt the roughly 300 blue collars who work on the city’s water network needed a more structured and safe training program than the traditional “learn it on the job” technique.

Montreal sees more than 500 emergency calls a year for repairs to its water mains and sewage pipes. Fixing them quickly involves multiple risks, including the possibility of tainting the drinking water supply with bacteria-infested sewage water or opening the wrong valve and releasing water under high pressure that could result in more breaks.

“I tell new students that working with drinking water means working directly in public health,” said Doris Nault, a former city worker with the St-Laurent borough for 19 years before taking on his job as a training foreman at Maxim’eau. “If you don’t believe in that, don’t bother doing the training.”

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There are also myriad risks to workers’ lives. Working underground in tight spaces puts them at risk of cave-ins, or asphyxiation from toxic fumes like methane gas. Because they sometimes labour in sewage contaminated water, workers have to be vaccinated against hepatitis and other diseases.

Montreal’s drinking water network works on a gravitational system, with water pumped up into reservoirs in more elevated sections of the city from whence it flows downward through different sized pipes at pressures of 80 pounds per square inch or more.

“You cut the wrong spot, you have an explosion,” Nault said. Aqueduct repair work is considered one of the most dangerous blue-collar jobs. It’s also physically taxing, working in tight spaces underground, shifting dirt and cutting through steel pipes with specialized chainsaws. Many of the workers are former garbage men, who tend to be in good shape. The job pays between $65,000 and $70,000 a year.

At Maxim’eau, trainees receive 200 hours of mostly hands-on education in order to qualify for provincial certification to be able to do aqueduct work. They’re trained on fully sized water pipes and fire hydrants, or on how to lower themselves down through a manhole cover and into narrow 10-foot-deep concrete boxes to access water mains. A small-scale model of a standard underground drinking water system featuring see-through plastic pipes allows them to practice on how to shut off the proper valves and in which order during a repair.

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The training centre, the only one of its kind in North America, has received interest from engineers from as far away as Boston and France, said Mélanie Garneau, head of the training sector at Maxim’eau.

On Tuesday, Samuel Cliche was one of half a dozen city workers training to become site foremen qualified to oversee that work is being done properly.

“I chose this line of work because it’s challenging” said Cliche, as one of his colleagues took five minutes to cut through a 6-inch steel pipe with a specialized hydraulic chainsaw. “Every day you come across something different. It’s interesting work.”

Winter is the hardest time, when water-saturated dirt turns to ice, making it hard to move around and slippery as temperatures drop to -20C.

A main incentive was to have as many blue collars possible trained so the city wouldn’t have to turn to more expensive private contractors, said Maja Vodanovic, the city’s executive committee member responsible for water infrastructure. The training, along with other equipment designed by the city, like a $400,000 truck kitted out with all the materials needed to complete a water main fix that won a recent innovation award, is bearing fruit, she said. Improvements to the water main system have resulted in 50 per cent fewer water main breaks compared to 10 years ago, Vodanovic said.

Still, not all deficiencies can be caught in time. Roughly 90 per cent of the water system is in good condition and the other 10 per cent is under constant surveillance. Even with regular inspections, breaks happen.

As for extreme flooding events, Vodanovic warned that homeowners will always be at risk.

“No sewer system in the world can handle that much water. … It’s impossible to make the sewers” large enough to handle the amounts of water the city has seen in recent years, Vodanovic said.

“Homeowners have to do everything they can to protect their homes, and if their basements have been flooded a few times already, they’re going to have to abandon them,” she said.

rbruemmer@postmedia.com

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