On September 1, 2017, the City of Edmonton transferred its Drainage utility to EPCOR, giving EPCOR responsibility for Edmonton's entire water cycle. Drainage Services provides wastewater and stormwater drainage services to Edmonton residents by planning, building, operating, and maintaining the pipes, tunnels, pump stations, biosolids management, and stormwater management facilities that make up the drainage network.
The drainage system consists of the sanitary collection and stormwater collection infrastructure. The sanitary collection infrastructure includes 2,651 km of sanitary sewer pipes, and 249,967 service connections that connect all customers to sanitary trunk sewers. Sanitary trunks then deliver wastewater directly to the Gold Bar Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The stormwater collection infrastructure includes 3,012 km of storm sewer pipes, 153,850 storm service connections, 58,742 catch basins, 82,302 manholes, 88 pump stations and 183 stormwater ponds. This collection infrastructure is connected to the storm water trunk sewers, which in turn connects to the wetlands for treatment or directly to the North Saskatchewan River. The wetlands help remove over 20,000 tonnes of total suspended solids each year before discharging to the river outfalls.
The drainage system also includes 839 km combined sanitary and storm sewers. EPCOR continues to improve and expand the underground Drainage infrastructure system through its in-house construction expertise, performing open-cut and tunnel construction using an in-house workforce, as well as specialized equipment such as tunnel boring machines.
