Balzer Creek, trail network to get facelift
Kitchener will spend $1M on summer project
KITCHENER — The City of Kitchener will carry out $1 million worth of work this summer to reduce erosion and restore Balzer Creek and expand the trail network along the creek.
The work will also improve the local trail system, linking two disconnected sections and adding a short section of boardwalk over a locally significant wetland.
The work will also replace a small concrete footbridge that leads to Country Hills Park with a bigger, arching footbridge that will be less prone to flooding.
“Right now the bridge is just a small concrete pad that crosses Balzer Creek,” said Mark Parris, the city landscape architect working on the project.
Much of the work is needed to correct problems that arose through the transformation of the area around the creek from quiet farmland to a city subdivision, said Matt Wilson, the city engineer managing the project.
As the Country Hills area was developed, the west end of the creek was buried into underground pipes.
Today, only 1.7 kilometres of the creek are above ground, flowing from where the creek first emerges from a pipe at Old Country Drive, east until it spills into Schneider Creek, near Fallowfield Drive.
“You’ve got 250 hectares of urban land — concrete and roads and school and industrial properties — that all sort of feed (their runoff) into the underground storm sewer,” explained Wilson. “There’s nothing to slow down the rainwater as it travels through the pipes.”
When it emerges at Country Hills Drive after a storm, the water is moving much faster than it would in a natural creek, and that has led to a fair bit of erosion along the banks of Balzer Creek.
The erosion led to poor water quality as sediment builds up and, over time, the creek has migrated to now flow directly over an underground storm water pipe.
A walk along the creek offers the bizarre sight of manholes sticking up like military pillboxes from the valley floor and, in
one case, from the middle of the creek.
Having the creek flow directly over the storm sewers could damage the infrastructure, Wilson said, so the work includes shifting the creek bed away from nearby homes and the storm sewer.
The work will also improve the local trail system, linking two unconnected sections of trail to create a continuous 1.2-kilometre stretch, Parris said.
Improving trail links is one of the goals of the city’s trail master plan, Parris said. The area has few east-west trails, he said. “Right now, to get anywhere east or west you have to take Block Line Road or Bleams Road, which are busier streets.”
The work includes landscaping to replace invasive species with native trees and plants, such as sumac, pussy willow, dogwood and chokecherry, Parris said.
Work will happen in phases to reduce the impact on migrating birds and fish in the creek, Wilson said. Construction is expected to wrap up before the end of this year.
The project is funded from the storm water utility’s capital budget. More information on the project can be found on the city’s website at www.kitchener.ca/en/ businessinkitchener/Environmental_assessments.asp.