FTLComm - Tisdale - August 27, 1999

Yesterday it was SaskEnergy's turn to disrupt traffic and put a few major holes in main street.

The re-curbing of Main has been a major undertaking this summer in preparation for the resurfacing of the street by the department of highways to begin in a day or two. SaskEnergy has decided that this is a good time to fix some lines under the street before the resurfacing takes place.

There already exists a liner pipe under the railway tracks so all that was needed was to open the road up on each side of the railway and replace the main gas line that goes through that conduit. In the picture at the right you can see the storm sewer pipe that takes the rain and snow melt from the West side of the street to the East side of the street. A similar pipe runs under the tracks with a gas line inside it. When talking with the SaskEnergy welder it was unclear as to the reason for the renewal, but they had decided that is should be replaced and this was the best time to carry out the work.

SaskEnergy had been working on highway #3 on Wednesday when it had to open up the road in front of Fairburn tire and then make a new service entrance to what will be the new Coop Cardlock facility near the 7-11. You can see how this procedure went in the pictures below.

It seems this past week or so almost every day Ensign has carried a story on the digging of one hole or another. Surprisingly, Canadians seem a bit obsessed with digging holes. More and more we are putting those services we all need under ground. Water and sewer were always underground things but the trend to burying telephone, cable and electrical power is widespread. About a decade ago SaskPower actually was going to attempt to bury all of its rural transmission lines because of the maintenance cost saving, then the recession hit and the programme was ended but a lot of the province had its lines underground before it was stopped.

Wolsley, was the first town in the province to have all of its services underground as it was a test project to see how such a town would work. It was a success but short term cost prevented its replication.