What's preventing more residential growth in downtown London?

London’s building boom has pushed the downtown to the limit of its sewage capacity.

On Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford was in London to announce an investment of almost $24 million to support more residential development in the downtown core.

The provincial contribution will offset about three-quarters of the cost to install a larger pipe to carry sewage from Downtown London to the Greenway Wastewater Treatment Plant.

City hall is picking up the remaining costs.

“How can you build more homes if you don’t have proper water, wastewater, and sewer systems to build the homes?” asked Ford. “So we’ve stepped up in a big way.”

Eliminating the sewage bottleneck will unlock capacity to build an additional 17,576 residential units in the downtown.

“We are fully committed to the province's goals of building more housing in this community, and that is why the infrastructure in the City of London is so incredibly important,” said Mayor Josh Morgan.

The current pipe that runs beneath the forks of the Thames was installed in the 1930s.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks in London, Ont. on Aug. 26, 2024. (CTV News file image)

Installation of the new pipe will avoid disturbing the sensitive ecosystem by tunnelling beneath the river.

“We’ll be micro-tunneling the new sewer underneath the river,” explained Ashley Rammeloo, director of Water, Wastewater, and Stormwater.

Micro-tunneling is a state-of-the-art construction technique that gradually digs a tunnel while simultaneously forming the sewer to prevent a collapse.

The technique has been used in a handful of other projects in London where digging a trench is not feasible.

The new pipe will be installed in 2025, permitting a number of new residential high-rise projects in Downtown London to break ground.