MORRISBURG – After nearly a year of construction, crews are putting the finishing touches to the $4.2 million Morrisburg Roundabout and Street Scape project.
SDG Counties Director of Transportation Ben deHaan told The Leader that he expects work to finish by around May 6.
“All the work is done save and except the energizing of the lights and some additional clean up at Strader Motor Sales,” he explained. “The rest of the work taking place from now until May 6 is site clean up, topsoiling and seeding and flagpole installations.”
The flag polls to be installed in the roundabout centre piece are set to arrive this week, and electrical work is awaiting Electrical Safety Authority inspection.
Pandemic-related supply chain delays last fall resulted in some materials like lights and other electrical components arriving later than planned. deHaan said that the Counties has been lucky and not run into further supply chain issues.
During the spring melt this year, some water pooling has been seen at business entrances along the north side of County Road 2. deHaan clarified those are design and construction related issues and part of climate change resiliency.
“In road design, a big focus in storm water runoff is to attenuate it – or slow it down – to avoid overwhelming storm pipes and creating backups or floods,” he said. “Some of the strategies employed within the design were to minimize slopes, and use spillways and ditches, rather than directly dumping into catch basins.”
Part of the reason for flooding is the project is a construction site. Catch basins were covered with filter cloths to keep topsoil out as landscaping grass has not yet taken root. A lesson deHaan said Counties’ staff learned was the need to be proactive in opening some of the spillways and removing ice jams in the drainage.
“As the project wraps up, frost comes out of the ground and the grass starts growing, I’m expecting things will be much improved,” he explained.
Moving ahead, deHaan said the Counties plan to monitor drainage after big storm events to ensure it works, make modifications if necessary, and “pro-actively open drainage outlets next winter before any ice melt.”
The $4.2 million infrastructure project was approved in 2020 with 73 per cent of the funding contributed by the federal and provincial governments. Project construction began in early-Summer 2021 and included replacing the antiquated traffic signals at the intersection of County Roads 2 and 31, and street-scaping approximately one kilometre of CR2.
