Yellowknife’s lift station banging is finally set to end

Relentless banging from a Yellowknife construction project, described by residents as an “exhausting, constant pounding,” is coming to an end, city officials say.

The city is spending years building a new sewage facility, known as a lift station, near the intersection of 50 Avenue and School Draw Avenue.

City Hall says it’s vital work. But to get it done, contractors have been working for 12 hours or more daily for months – and are now working from 7am till 11pm each day according to city notices, maxing out what’s allowed under the municipal noise bylaw.

Some residents say the city’s communication of those working hours has been inadequate. Others are just sickened by a piledriving noise that’s near-constant during (and, for some people, beyond) waking hours.

“This is seriously not fun on a Sunday morning at 7am. It’s driving me nuts,” one resident wrote, saying they live a few streets from the site.

“The lack of communication and constant extension of period of extended work hours is becoming very frustrating,” another resident commented beneath a city notice about the 7am-11pm working hours.

“Don’t get me wrong, this project needs to happen,” they continued. “But City of Yellowknife, this is a residential area, and 16 hours a day, seven days a week in an area that’s usually pretty quiet – with an end date that seems to keep changing – is really hard to take.”

Now, city public works director Chris Greencorn says there’s some good news. The banging is coming to an end.

“I chatted with our engineering consultants today, and they expect the piling to be pretty-much complete by Monday or Tuesday, which is the loud, excessive banging that everybody hears,” Greencorn said in an interview late last week.

“Then we’ll be changing to an excavation phase. I don’t want to say that’s not going to be noisy, but it’s not going to be the incessant banging of the drilling of piles. All that will be complete by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, so I’m told.”

Greencorn said the site will also shut down from December 24 until January 5, and possibly as soon as December 20.

Below, read a transcript of the interview that sets out why the project is so important to the city, what the next phase will be like, and what residents who live nearby should expect in terms of noise.

This interview was recorded on November 27, 2025. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Ollie Williams: How do you explain this project to people in terms of what’s going on, why it’s important and how long it’s going to take?

Chris Greencorn: The old saying is poop flows downhill. How our sewer system works is everything flows via gravity to a low point, and it’s then pumped via force main and a lift station to the lagoon.

Lift station one, at the bottom the hill, is a catchment area for Niven Lake and half of downtown. Everything flows downhill to the lift station. It is then pumped all the way across town to lift station five and then out to the lagoon.

Lift station one is 62 years old. Yellowknife was a completely different place when it was built, so the capacity is lacking. It’s also old. There are some safety concerns – we can never get to the bottom of it to clean it, because it fills up so fast that we have trouble doing maintenance on it.

All those factors led to the replacement of it. That’s what we’re doing right now. It’s a brand new, modern facility that will account for the growth we’ve had and will also account for future growth projections.

How long is it going to take you to get it done?

November 2027 is our tentative schedule. The contractor is actually trying to get done early. The contractual schedule is July 2028. They’re trying to get done ahead of that.

It seems like the project is using all the hours God sends, or at least all the hours the noise bylaw sends. Why is that?

It’s a very challenging site for a couple reasons.

The design is intense. There are 63 piles for the foundation. Those are about 25 metres in the ground. It’s basically the foundation of the whole facility.

Criss-crossing that site are water mains, sewer mains, electrical power, storm water mains, and just a busy site. We’re also trying to keep the sewage pumpout accessible for our sewage contractor to reduce their haul distance, because otherwise they would have to go clear across the town, which costs money.

There is permafrost in the area, so we’re trying to manage all that. There have been a couple equipment challenges.

You have your best-set schedule. When stuff happens and there’s slippage of that schedule, you do your best to make up to the milestone. The milestone the contractor is trying to get to is to have the piling done so they’re ready for concrete work after the Christmas shutdown.

What would be the harm in using fewer hours a day? Why does this have to happen at this pace?

Time is money. Contractors develop their schedules taking into account the availability of people and materials.

Weather is a huge factor in this. We are pushing really hard to get this all buttoned up before -40C hits. There are various challenges that will hit the site at -40C and we want to be ahead of that.

That’s not to say we don’t have empathy for the neighbourhood. I certainly do. We’re trying our absolute best to get the noisiest part out of the way right now.

Residents might hear you mention 2027 or 2028 for the end of the end of the project and think, “My goodness, if this is going to be like this till 2027-28, I’m not sure how I’m going to feel.” Talk me through how you expect the noise this project generates to change over time.

I chatted with our engineering consultants today and they expect the piling to be pretty-much complete by Monday or Tuesday, which is the loud, excessive banging that everybody hears. Then we’ll be changing to an excavation phase.

I don’t want to say that’s not going to be noisy, but it’s not going to be the incessant banging and drilling of piles. All that will be complete by Monday or Tuesday at the latest, so I’m told.

Then they’re going to start that excavation phase, which is going to be dump trucks and excavator-type equipment, which a lot of people are used to, because it’s the same equipment that we operate during snow removal. I would say there’s relief in sight.

There’s also a shutdown from December 24 to January 5, roughly. I’m saying December 24. The contractor really wants to be out of there by December 20, but our comms are going to be somewhat conservative on that and say December 24. We’re hoping to be shut down by December 20 for the holiday season.

We’re doing our best to keep our website updated and I’m trying to get a more wholesome, not forecast, but what you can expect after Christmas for concrete work and what can residents expect when the steel is going up for the structural part. What can you expect when we start to frame in the walls and stuff? We’re going to try to have those types of explanations on the website.

I’ve seen some comments that it’s been poorly planned and things like that. I would argue it’s actually been really well planned. Given the complexity of the site, the contractor is doing a great job.

We’re balancing our mitigation tactics with cost to the public. We’re always cognizant of taxpayer dollars and commitments that we make to the public on both schedule and budget. So I would say overall, from the director’s seat, it’s been going actually really smooth, just from a project perspective.

I obviously understand that neighbors may not feel that way, and that’s totally understandable. I have a four-year-old and two-year-old, I would find that challenging as well. So I would just say thank you to everyone.

We really need this infrastructure in place. We know it’s super annoying. I drove down there myself, and I’m like, “That’s loud.” We’re doing everything we can. Once this corner is complete, I think Yellowknife overall will be better off, and the community will really enjoy that corner once the project’s done.