Culvert gets high-tech revamp

County saves $700,000, avoids road closure, by relining large culvert

Workers relining the culvert and the finished project.

The view on County Road 25 south of Warkworth is a typical Northumberland County vista – rolling hills, trees and farm fields. It doesn’t seem like a spot for high-tech innovation and a smart, cost-saving initiative.

That’s why this is a story.

Just north of Grant Road the county road crosses Salt Creek. If you are driving, you might not notice since it is seven metres down to the water. But the county’s public works department notices such things, and it knew that the large culvert the creek runs through was nearing the end of its life and needed to be replaced.

The usual plan would have been to dig up the roadway, all the way down to the culvert, rip it out and put in a new one. That would have cost about $1.2 million and meant the entire road would have been blocked off for some time.

But last year the public works department examined the culvert and decided it could be relined with a geopolymer mortar, an alternative to Portland cement that binds with the existing culvert and creates a strong, durable pipe.

Deputy Warden Mandy Martin, a former journalist who knows a good story when she sees one, highlighted the culvert renovation during Wednesday’s council meeting and asked Public Works Director Denise Marshall to explain the process.

Marshall said that the relining only cost $553,000, a saving of about $700,000 and meant the work could be done without shutting down the roadway. Just one lane was closed at a time while the work was done.

“This was the first time the county used this trenchless technology on a structural culvert as a rehabilitation method,” Scott Berry, Communications Officer, Capital Projects, told me. “Culvert relining also offers environmental advantages, as it limits disturbance to the surrounding area and the watercourse.”

Berry said the county has 68 culverts that it maintains and will look for times when this method can be used.

“Now that we’ve used this methodology and it was successful, it’s something that will definitely be considered for future culverts, if they are good candidates,” Marshall told council.

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