THUNDER BAY — A two-year, multi-million project to repair and upgrade the century-old Boulevard Lake Dam may finally get underway in 2020.
After delays spanning several years, the City of Thunder Bay hopes a new environmental assessment of the project will satisfy Ontario's environment ministry and allow work to proceed.
The city recently announced the completion of an EA that studied how the dam should be rehabilitated and the potential environmental and social impacts of the work.
In 2015, a previous EA was found by the ministry to be inadequate.
Project Engineer Mike Vogrig feels the more in-depth study that's just been published addresses all potential concerns.
"Any impacts from construction, as we see it, will be temporary. They'll be remediated, just naturally, once the dam is back in operation," Vogrig told Tbnewswatch.
He said the construction methods the city anticipated during the initial EA "pretty much have stayed the same" for the second study, except for keeping the water level during construction a little higher than was first proposed.
The work would include:
- installing a redundant set of post-tensioned steel tendons in buttresses along the east side of the dam
- rehabilitating deteriorated protective concrete through patching
- replacing wooden stop logs with manually-operated mechanical gates
- widening the deck of the dam to City of Thunder Bay standard trail width
- improving lighting on the dam
Two cofferdams would be built to facilitate repairs to the upstream side of the dam, requiring a lowering of Boulevard Lake
"The water levels that we normally maintain in the summer, we won't be maintaining those, so during that one year of construction when the level is dropped, the park use will be diminished, for sure," Vogrig said.
In 2015, the cost of the project was pegged at more than $5 million. City officials have not come up with a revised figure as yet, but it's likely the cost has gone up since then, partly due to the requirement for additional repairs.
Vogrig said the project potentially could be tendered toward the end of 2019, with construction beginning the following year. It's possible some preparatory work could also be undertaken in 2019.
The new environmental report is posted on the city's website, with public comment on the findings being accepted until Jan. 31.
