Now, it will cost up to $25 million to get the equipment out from under Old Mill Drive
The price of rescuing a multi-million-dollar boring machine that got stuck under a street in the west end has nearly tripled in just a few months. City staff say the work to get the machine out of the ground is harder than they first thought.
Next week, the updated cost estimates and schedule will be presented to Toronto’s General Government committee. Documents show that the cost of work to free a micro-tunneling boring machine that has been stuck under Old Mill Drive since last spring has gone up from $9 million in March to $25 million.
Staff from the city say that more groundwater seeping into the site and the need to stabilize the soil have caused the price to go up and the project to be delayed. The machine is still stuck, and it’s taken about six months longer to fix than was first thought.
Residents aren’t happy about the latest delay. They say they’ve been dealing with construction noise, dirt, and vibrations for years. Tanya Boswick, who lives on the street, said that the price increase was the latest bad news.
She said, “I think every taxpayer in this city should be very angry about how much money is being spent on this project.” “Our city has to deal with a lot of other people, groups, causes, and needs.”
Boswick said that the neighborhood has had to deal with dust, noise, and a steady flow of construction vehicles for years. She said that they want the project to be done.
“Really, it’s just the noise and vibration that never stop,” she said. “On top of the bad air quality, there’s also a lot of dust and dirt floating around. It has really turned this summer into a nightmare for the people in this area.”
Iain Downie lives next to the job site in a condo building. From his apartment, he can see where he works.
“We can’t sit outside on our balconies,” he told us. “Due to the dust, we have to clean everything all the time. We change the filters in our homes often because it’s just coming in.”
“And we have to listen to everyone in the neighborhood complain, which is not fun at all.”
In March 2022, work started on Old Mill Drive to dig a new storm sewer. The project was made to fix the fact that basements in the area were always getting wet. To make the new sewer tunnel, city workers decided to use a remote-controlled micro-tunneling boring machine that is 1.5 meters wide and 5 meters long.
The machine was supposed to be put 18 meters underground and move 282 meters to an exit shaft that had already been built on Bloor Street West. Workers had to put it deep underground so it wouldn’t get in the way of the Bloor-Danforth subway line, which runs nearby.
But with only seven meters left to go, the machine hit 14 underground steel tiebacks that had been used to build a condo building nearby. It got caught up in them and is now bent and going in the wrong direction.
The price of the rescue machine goes up by $16 million
A budget of $7.2 million was set aside for the first part of the work to dig the new sewer tunnel. In March, the city agreed to pay about $9 million for a single-source deal to get the machine out.
The new report says that costs have gone up by $16 million, bringing the total to $25 million.
The city says that the most recent numbers are estimates that show “the possible costs needed to finish the emergency work.”
In a statement, the city said, “The final costs and actual payments will be based on invoices that can be proven and verified.”
Contractors hoped to get the machine running again by the beginning of April. It is thought that the rest of the sewer work will be done by the fall.
Workers think they will be able to get the machine out of the ground by the end of August.
The city says that when workers dug by hand to get to the boring machine, they found more water than they had expected.
In a statement, the city said, “In order to safely remove the machine, the water had to be removed and the ground around it had to be stabilized.””This needed an expert in improving and stabilizing the ground.”
Coun. Gord Perks said that water getting into the building has been a problem, and that the rainy weather hasn’t helped.
“When it rains a lot, the work they’re doing to get the tunnel boring machine out is hampered,” he said.
Perks said that he understood why people were upset about the project. He has set up more neighborhood meetings with the city to keep people up to date on what’s going on.
“People have every right to be angry that a project that was supposed to be finished in six or eight months keeps going on and on and on,” he said. “I can see why you would say that. But there isn’t a quick and easy way out of this. This will cost a lot of money.”
The city’s General Government Committee is led by Coun. James Pasternak. He said that council members will ask direct questions of city staff on Monday.
“This is a shockingly large amount of money,” he said. “Now I know that the work that needs to be done is very dangerous and difficult.”
Pasternak said that the work is important and must keep going so that the road around the site doesn’t cave in. But he hopes that people will learn something from this.
He said, “We’re going to ask some tough questions about why it’s a sole source, why it’s so much money, and what our legal options are for getting these funds back.”