The yellow-pipes spotted on the southern end of the city have a purpose

As road construction season continues in Steinbach, many residents living in the southwest corner of the city have noticed the long-yellow pipes lying at the side of Hwy 12 south or lying on the sidewalk between Lumber and McKenzie, or that large stash on the green space near Grandview Drive.  

Those are Natural Gas transmission main pipelines that will improve the gas system in Steinbach. 

Manitoba Hydro Inspector, Kelly Buors says, work laying the new larger pipes began on July 18 at the south-end of Steinbach and he expects will continue for several weeks to possibly months. But he says, “you can only do so much at a time, so it'll just be little sections like this (referring to the work along Brandt Street south) and there won't be very many situations where we need to close off roads, except over on Mackenzie.” 

Buors says, while most of the process of laying the pipe is done underground, they do, however, need to go above ground for which they have taken out permits from the city of Steinbach. “So, the city is aware.” 

He continues saying, while the pipes are pulled through the ditches underneath the dirt, “we do have to dig wherever we need to tie in the pipes, with intersecting ones. There we make a mark wherever we are crossing an underground hydro line or crossing a telephone line. That's why you see all these little flags everywhere. Then after this is done, the city can access that gas pipeline if they need to install it for a subdivision or something else.” 

Buors says the reason they are putting in new pipes “is to increase the capability of the gas system in Steinbach.” They are doing this by putting in larger pipes, going from the two-inch existing pipes to an 8” diameter pipe. 

He lets Steinbach residents know that they hope to get the section of pipeline finished at the intersection of Brandt Street south and McKenzie Avenue before school starts.  

Buors says, the reason the pipes are lying on the sidewalks and the green space near Grandview Drive, is because their length is too long to store somewhere else.

Open ditch where pipeline installers are connecting mains with existing gas pipes. The narrow yellow pipeline is the 2" older gasline. 

Meanwhile, city of Steinbach engineer Aaron Rach confirms that the 8-inch gas transmission main will be going down Brandt Street south towards Steinbach, weaving its way down McKenzie Ave west and eventually ending at the Bush Farm Road and PTH 52 intersection. 

Rach says the work will affect traffic with some “temporary inconveniences to residents as they're working in their area but will not affect private property.” He says that the city isn't really involved in this one, “outside of advising Manitoba Hydro. We had to approve the route through town and issue permits for them to do the work, but outside of that, this is a Manitoba Hydro project.” 

Rach says the intent of this new transmission line, “means that it is going to provide additional capacity for the city of Steinbach to support future growth. As well, this is a new route that is providing some redundancy to the gas system, in that it's going to be a secondary source of natural gas to the city and surrounding area, which will help prevent widespread outages if there are any pipeline failures or damage to the existing line that comes to Steinbach.”

Intersection of Brandt and McKenzie where gas pipeline work is currently being done.