About a dozen Sackville residents dropped in at town hall last week to look over plans for a major trunk sewer renewal project that will take three years to complete and will directly impact about 15 properties and parts of the Trans Canada Trail.
The project starts at the Weldon Street end of the Trans Canada Trail and runs about 550 metres northward to the end of Princess Street.
Special projects manager Kieran Miller has been coordinating communications for the project, and says notices went out to the 15 properties directly affected by the project, as well as the surrounding properties on Weldon, Morgan Lane, Clarence and Princess Streets. “They might not be directly impacted but there is a big infrastructure project happening in their backyards,” says Miller. “We wanted to give them the opportunity to ask any questions.”
Any property owners who couldn’t make the meeting will be sent a detailed outline of what the town plans to do, a requirement in this case, because the town needs to secure easements on the affected properties before it can proceed. The existing piping is old enough to pre-date the town’s policy of seeking out easement contracts with property owners, which needs to happen for the project to proceed.
“That’s how they did it back in the day,” says Miller. “They often put in services without getting the easement.” Miller says town staff at the time likely just got a verbal okay from local property owners before laying the sanitary sewer line through their property. “That’s not how things work now,” says Miller.”If you’re putting in municipal services, you get an easement. So we’re looking to get easements for that existing infrastructure that’s already in the ground.”
Miller says the main concerns she heard last week were regarding impacts to the trail, and the possibility of losing trees to the project. “We’ve also had some people who are excited for trees to get cut down,” says Miller, “so we’ve heard both sides of it.”
Pierre Plourde of Englobe (formerly Crandall) Engineering is the consulting engineer on the project, a role he was hired because the town is ‘in between’ engineers, with Dwayne Acton having left in April and new town engineer Jon Eppell not slated to start until August.
Plourde says the trail will only be affected for a short time in the first phase of the project, this year. “We need to cross the trail,” says Plourde, and “when we cross the trail, of course, it’ll be close for safety purposes… It shouldn’t be too many days that it will be actually affected.”
The first phase this year will take about four to six weeks of construction, says Plourde. It is the shortest segment of the project in distance, but the most complex, and it is the “bottom of the system”, says Plourde. “Here’s kind of the crucial part of the system because it’s at the bottom. So we’ll be replacing manholes and pipes at the bottom. And we’ll have temporary pumping during the construction to make sure we can make the proper connections.”
One new factor that has popped up for this project is concern over invasive plant species that are located along the pathway of the project. Plourde says he’s heard from several residents concerned about Japanese Knotweed and other invasive plants.
“We’re getting people like biologists involved that understand these plants,” says Plourde. “And we’re locating them properly on the drawing for the contractor to be able to remove them and dispose of them securely.”
Area resident Harold Popma was at the open house and says while he was curious as to the effects on his garden and landscaping, he accepts the project as a necessity. Though he does acknowledge the impacts to his property will be negligable compared to some others. “The people who live closer by have more of an impact,” says Popma. “I’m not really concerned.”
“I’m kind of a laissez-faire,” says Popma. “I mean, I want to know what they’re doing and where they’re doing it, but then, you know, I accept that that is going to have to be done.”