By Tim Kiladze

Photo by Andrew Moore.

No, that giant hole at the corner of Hayter Street and Laplante Avenue isn’t the opening to the Hellmouth (even though Spike and Drusilla would make nice additions to Toronto’s population). Instead, as pointed out by the inquisitive folk who post on Urban Toronto, the massive opening is part of Enwave’s Deep Lake Water Cooling (DLWC) system that runs underneath the downtown core.
The pic you see was first posted to an Urban Toronto thread back in November of 2007, but the system itself has been under construction since 2002. Using intake pipes that stretch five kilometres out from Toronto’s shore and reach eighty-three metres deep into Lake Ontario, the DLWC draws in water at a temperature just above the freezing mark and uses it in the cooling process for downtown office towers and large buildings, serving as an alternative to in-building electrically driven chillers. Because it uses lake water, the DLWC enables its customers to reduce electricity usage designated for cooling systems by as much as ninety percent, allowing for seventy-nine thousand tonnes of carbon dioxide to be removed from the air annually. Given its early successes with the Air Canada Centre and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, the DLWC has earned the attention of major Toronto property owners and it now services an array of downtown buildings including Royal Bank Plaza, Queen’s Park, and Toronto General Hospital.
While the bird’s-eye visual of the hole at Hayter and Laplante is interesting enough to look at for some, there are urban explorers in and around Toronto who might find that the DLWC’s underground tunnels provide for a fascinating (and probably illegal) adventure. For those who take that plunge, be warned: there’s nothing but the fantasy/reality divide that prevents a soul-less Angel from lurking down there, just ready to bite you.