A’burg project gets $6M boost
Mayor says funding key to waste water improvements
The federal and provincial governments committed almost $6 million on Wednesday to help fund a waste water project that is crucial to future development and environmental protection, according to Amherstburg’s Mayor Aldo DiCarlo.
DiCarlo said the grants — worth up to $2,933,333 from both levels of government — constitute two-thirds of the estimated $8.8-million sewage diversion project that will see upgrades to several pumping stations, the construction of a new force main, which will take waste water to the town’s treatment plant, and the decommissioning of lagoons in the Edgewater area on the north end of town.
Ted McMeekin, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, and MP Jeff Watson (CEssex) announced the funding — including an additional $227,000 for Pelee Island — during a news conference at the King’s Navy Yard Park in Amherstburg.
DiCarlo said the Edgewater sewage diversion project is an infrastructure priority for the town.
“(The project) is holding up some development in that area (the Golfview, Kingsbridge region),” he said. “This is the beginning … without this funding obviously it would have been delayed a lot longer.”
DiCarlo expects the work will take a couple years to complete and he’d like to get it started as soon as possible.
“That kind of money isn’t readily available in Amherstburg and with the province and the federal government coming through to the extent that they have, it puts us in a realistic position to address it now,” DiCarlo said.
Watson said the Edgewater diversion project is “very important for environmental reasons (as there is some) sewage bypass that ends up impairing the water quality in the Detroit River.”
He said the Pelee Island project would “restore and rehabilitate its flood management and drainage.”
“This program will help the Township of Pelee begin a much-needed restoration of our drainage system,” said Mayor Rick Masse.
Masse said much of Pelee Island is below lake level and protected by its shoreline, as well as by a complex system of drainage canals and pumps.
“These funds will ( help us) replace one of our aging pumps and begin a program of canal cleaning to increase the capacity of our drainage system,” Masse said, adding the municipality would be “hardpressed to undertake such an important project” without the funding.
“Our government is committed to investing in infrastructure in communities across the entire province … because we need to build Ontario up,” McMeekin said.
“We want to demonstrate environmental stewardship and that’s a big part of what this morning’s announcement is about.”
McMeekin, representing Brad Duguid, Minister of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure and Watson, who spoke on behalf of Denis Lebel, Minister of Infrastructure, Communities and Intergovernmental Affairs, said the projects were approved under the $1-billion Small Communities Fund, a partnership that supports projects in communities with fewer than 100,000 residents.