Residents dig in against super-sewer plan
No consultation on plan: residents
Protesters buttonholed the city manager Wednesday but were stopped by the glass wall outside the mayor’s office as they called for changes to how the city will dig a new super sewer through the core.
Stanley Park, which is along the Rideau River not far from Sussex Drive, is poised to be a major construction and extraction area for the $232-million crosstown sewage tunnel, which will intercept overflow from combined sewers before it hits the Ottawa River.
Wearing construction vests and hard hats, about 50 protesters from the New Edinburgh community filed into chambers after a council meeting to do some intercepting of their own as politicians left the room.
Pamela Howson, a mother of three, said her house backs on to Stanley Park and she only found out about the local implications of the sewer project in October.
“In my house, we will be almost surrounded by explosions, heavy drilling and thousands of trucks for three years and the city didn’t even consult with our community,” Howson said.
Howson said she’s still recovering from a concussion she suffered while skating in November 2015. “I can’t heal a concussion with explosions and trucks and noise from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.,” she said.
The city hasn’t yet established the trucking route for the construction site at Stanley Park.
“There will be, we’ve been told, trucks every 15 minutes taking material from that site,” Victoria Henry said. “We’re a small neighbourhood that’s going to have an enormous amount of truck traffic.”
Henry said the big issue for residents is the silence about the project during the planning phase. People think the New Edinburgh community was deliberately left out the loop during the talks, Henry said.
Jan Goth said residents want the city to use LeBreton Flats for the major work that’s scheduled for Stanley Park.
“The park is going to be decimated,” Goth said.
The sewage tunnel’s western end point would be at LeBreton Flats.
The city has indicated it would cost up to $30 million more to relocate the “mucking” operations from Stanley Park to LeBreton Flats.
Protesters approached city manager Steve Kanellakos after the council meeting. Kanellakos heard them out and committed to provide the community with more information.
They then went to the mayor’s office in a failed attempt to get a meeting with Jim Watson.
Watson told reporters LeBreton Flats is not an option as an alternative mucking site for the tunnel. He acknowledged that residents across the central area have absorbed the impacts of major infrastructure projects.
“We know that many communities have had to put up with a lot over the years,” Watson said.
The local councillor said the city needs to explore ways to minimize the disruption for residents around Stanley Park.
“The city needs to do everything it can to mitigate the impact of this important project on New Edinburgh,” said Rideau-Rockcliffe Coun. Tobi Nussbaum. “Everyone understands this is a positive project for the city in terms of the environmental benefits, but it doesn’t mean the city can be cavalier in terms of the impacts on New Edinburgh, which is really taking the brunt of the negative elements of this project.”
The project is years in the making — council approved it in 2013, before Nussbaum was elected — but as far as he can tell, the New Edinburgh community wasn’t rolled into the consultation process.