Port Dalhousie pier designs coming soon
A detailed design for the Port Dalhousie piers is on track to be completed by the end of the month.
Fisheries and Oceans Canada said the engineering firm it hired is on schedule with its formal design of the piers, sections of which were closed in April 2015 for safety reasons.
Ministry spokeswoman Rosaleen O’Mahony said department officials will meet with the City of St. Catharines in April to discuss the next steps, once Fisheries and Oceans Canada has received and reviewed the detailed repair design.
Funding to proceed from the design stage to the building stage, however, still must be secured.
St. Catharines MP Chris Bittle said he’s continuing to work with the minister of Fisheries and Oceans’ office on it.
“We’ve been moving this file forward throughout our year and a half and we’ll continue to work hard,” he said Wednesday.
Bittle announced funding of $573,300 in December to pay for the formal detailed designs and for reconstruction of the east wall beside the Dalhousie Yacht Club on Lighthouse Road.
He said Wednesday that while he doesn’t expect a line item about the piers in the March 22 federal budget, it will allow him to see where the pots of money are so he can sit down with the minister and have some discussions about the way forward.
The fact the piers are not part of a working fishing harbour is a complicating factor when figuring out where the money should come from in the federal coffers.
“It’s a deficient government asset and it needs to be repaired,” said Bittle, adding if the funds don’t come from the small craft harbours budget it will come from somewhere else.
“Minister (Dominic) LeBlanc is a political veteran and he will help us along on this one. He’s interested in this project and his office is working closely with ours.”
An assessment of the piers in fall 2014 found some of the wood holding up the concrete decks had rotted away, leaving parts of the decks unsupported. Fisheries and Oceans had reports that people saw floating timbers down the channel and didn’t know where they were coming from.
The department did side-scan sonars after divers initially sent in to do an assessment were called off because of the collapsed sections. Those scans revealed major problems with the timber crib bases.
Fisheries and Oceans determined the east and west piers are too dangerous to re-open until they are fixed.
The city leases the piers from the federal government, which no longer has a purpose for them.
Fisheries and Oceans proposed long-term options for repair, the most expensive of which would encapsulate the piers with steel sheet piles and allow for pedestrians and boot mooring like before. That has an estimated price tag of $33 million.
Other options included $28 million to put rocks on the side of the piers to create a stabilizing berm, which would allow for pedestrians but not boats. The cheapest option would be to decommission the piers for $23 million.
After receiving feedback from more than 1,100 residents in a survey, city council requested in October that the department include full pedestrian access to the east and west piers and transient boat mooring in the design phase.
Mayor Walter Sendzik said Wednesday the public wants a rehabilitation plan that will make the piers fully functional like they were before the closure.
“That has been heard loud and clear by the DFO staff,” he said. “The anticipation is that is what would be coming forward as the preferred option.”
The department has been working with city staff through the design process and updates have been provided, Sendzik said. He said the city is looking forward to the next phase.