Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1433288
StormTrap system installation for the City of Edmonton. D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 1 | 13 Concrete P H OTO G R A P H Y CO U RT E S Y L A FA RG E (completed earlier this year), and Ocean Concrete (an affiliated company of Lehigh Hanson) deliv- ered 13,450 cubic metres of concrete in total. Ocean also worked with the contractor to reduce the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of the concrete in vari- ous ways: using EcoCemPLC was one, and another was working together on construction schedule and design for the different concrete elements to reduce cement content and the utilization of maturity testing for the in-place /non-destructive concrete strength tests that are nearly always ahead of the cylinders or destructive tests. All concrete produced using EcoCem PLC reduced the GWP of the concrete by about 10 percent; the design allowed for a later strength (56 days) to be achieved in the footings and raft slab foundation. Moreover, 800 cubic metres of concrete would see a mix with a much lower carbon intensity than the already respectable 28 day mix that was proposed initially. In Edmonton, efficiency of a different sort thanks to concrete is being achieved by Lafarge, whose pre- cast division will be casting 500 massive concrete components of a stormwater storage system rela- tively new to Canada, called StormTrap. The system was necessitated by the City of Edmonton's Fort Road Widening project, part of the Yellowhead Trail Freeway Conversion that will see a long portion of Fort Road increased to six lanes and include the widening of the CN Rail underpass and lowering the road for increased height. The lowering of the road created challenges around how stormwater management would be handled. The solution provided by Lafarge and accepted by the City of Edmonton, StormTrap, pro- vides for temporary storage of stormwater runoff in a large underground precast chamber and allows the water to be released at a controlled rate and mit- igates harmful effects such as erosion and flooding. Lafarge is the licensed supplier of StormTrap in Western Canada and was able to successfully bid against other companies for the Fort Road Widening project, whose StormTrap system will have the capacity to store approximately 5.5 million litres of stormwater runoff. Jason Rabasse, business development manager – Precast for Lafarge, says, "Although new to this country, StormTrap is a great alternative to storm retention ponds, which take up a lot of space. We created our first StormTrap for the Valley Line LRT. StormTrap was designed to a CL800 loading to allow for road traffic and even LRT traffic to run over the top of our tank, providing a solution for stormwater management, while eliminating the need for a con- tainment pond." The Valley Line LRT tank Rabasse describes holds 3.6 million litres.