Guest Post by Terry Hughes via Joe Barkovich (from a reporters notebook) 

How often have we said, when travelling to Merritt Island, that we crossed “the aqueduct”, the structure that carries the recreational waterway over the Welland River. And why should we not! Since the beginning when the previous canals were built, these waterways were carried over the Welland River in structures called aqueducts. You can clearly see this fact in a 1920 photo (left) of the second and third aqueducts showing how the river passed underneath them before its course was changed in 1929. The white arrow is the structure that would become the Cross Street pool. However, the structure shown in the next photo (below) is not an aqueduct but a syphon culvert.

 

To show the difference, just examine the third picture (top) showing the base of the second aqueduct after the river was changed  that was being filled in by the train. Notice how the river would have flowed under this structure using four arches. It simply acted as an overpass like we see on our public highways. The first photo with the second and third aqueducts side by side clearly shows them carrying the older canals over the river.

When the decision was made to construct the syphon culvert as a replacement it would mean that the structure would need to be placed deep below the new canal. The river would be carried under the channel using six tubes, each of which were twenty-two feet in diameter. The fourth picture (left) taken from the bottom of one of these tubes was fifty feet down. The action of the water travelling down would create a suction or syphoning effect pulling the water under the canal and resurfacing on the east side. Obviously, this process would be different than used by the previous structures.

In the early 1960’s the city was busy cleaning up our polluted river from over a century of raw sewage. with a new sewage pollution plant on River Road. The problem was how do you get the sewage from Fonthill and the west side of the city under the canal without polluting it! A decision was made to use the southern-most tube to carry the sewage under the canal connecting with pipes  on the east side to the new plant. When walking over the culvert on the west side today you will notice a strong smell of sewage.

NOW YOU KNOW THAT ITS PROPER NAME IS… THE SYPHON CULVERT! And that’s a mouthful!

Next Column:  THE ACADIAN STORY

(Terry  Hughes is a Wellander who is passionate about heritage and history. His opinion column, Heritage Lives, appears on the blog once or twice monthly.)