Muddy waters

Lane Creek looking North from Wharf Street behind Pomodoro restaurant. In 1936 floodwaters rose above these banks into nearby stores. Quinte Conservation says it will happen again.

Quinte Conservation warns proposed Lane Creek culvert is too small

Time is running out for the municipality to redirect the flow of Lane Creek through the main intersection of Wellington this year. A committee of council is expected to hear an update to the proposed infrastructure project next week. The plan will see the creek, currently running under several village businesses, rerouted through a 1.5-metre by three-metre closed culvert beneath Wharf Street, from north of Main south to the Drake Devonshire site, where it would cross the hotelier’s property, pending the negotiation of an easment, to rejoin with the existing creek as it flows into Lake Ontario.

The specially designed culvert is proposed to be cast with a series of baffles or ridges along the bottom to allow sediment to build up, thereby providing regular resting spots for spawning fish that move up the stream against a heavy current each spring.

The Times has learned, however, that the agency tasked with managing and protecting the region’s waterways, including Lane Creek, has concerns about the size of the culvert chosen by the municipality for this project. Specifically, Quinte Conservation staff contend the culvert, as proposed by the municipality, isn’t big enough—that it will not allow sufficient flow to drain the village’s downtown core in the event of a one in one hundred year flood—a measure of the probability of the impact of a major flooding event.

The last time such a flood occurred was in 1936. Floodwaters rose that spring, inundating many of the businesses along Main Street near Wharf Street—rising to counter height at the dry goods store owned by John Wallace, which now houses East and Main Bistro. According to Wallace’s grandson, Ian Inrig, the flood contributed to his grandfather’s early death.

“He got pneumonia trying to salvage stock in the floodwaters,” explained Inrig. “He then had a stroke and finally a heart attack.”

Flooding isn’t just a theoretical possibility— Wellington’s core will be underwater again unless the proposed culvert is expanded, according to Quinte Conservation staff.

Public Works chief Rob McAuley said the pro-posed design matches the existing flow rate of the creek. He added that neither Quinte Conservation nor affected landowners have raised the issue directly to him.

But Quinte Conservations staff argues that given the potential impact of the project upon neighbouring homes and businesses, the municipality should have undertaken a thorough environmental assess-ment (EA) to determine the impact of the project—not only creatures that live in the water, but upon the humans who live and work around it.

Provincial regulations allow the municipality to side step  an EA where it is simply replacing culverts.

A more exhaustive review process would surely have driven the project cost higher and caused delays. But given the sensitivity the Lane Creek project has aroused, and the fact the creek runs through the middle of the village’s core, more questions are sure to surface— questions that might have been answered in a full EA.

Among the properties most affected by this decision is the former meat plant property occupying a couple of acres straddling the creek in the village core. Given the probability of flooding, Quinte Conservation officials say they would oppose new construction or development on a large swathe of the property, leaving only a fraction of the property free for redevelopment.

The meat plant land has been identified in the ongoing update to the Wellington Secondary Plan as a key strategic property to the village, given its scale and proximity to the village core. But as the proposed culvert is considered too small by Quinte Conservation, the meat plant property will face a steep hurdle toward redevelopment.

Quinte Conservation officials say they would not oppose the reconstruction of the meat plant, but any change of use of the property would trigger a review.

McAuley says such restrictions are appealable to the Quinte Conservation board, and compromises are typically found to mitigate flood damage and manage water flow, which would allow some redevelopment and thereby release the economic opportunities that might arise from it.

He rejected the notion that the size of the proposed culvert would make the property undevelopable.

Lane Creek has been a difficult project from the beginning.

The municipality is required by provincial regulations to inspect its bridges and culverts every few years. A routine visual inspection of the culvert system found that the sections beneath the roadways were in acceptable condition, but where they passed under private businesses,they found significant structural problems.

The municipality cannot ignore the problems. A failure in the buildings straddling the creek would leave it exposed to legal liability. So public works officials set to work devising a plan to fix the problems. No easements had been established underneath these buildings nor would it be easy to construct new culverts amid the gas, electricity and telecommunications network underneath each for four building under which the creek passes. Worse, the municipality would retain some liability exposure.

Several paths for the creek were developed. The path selected would see the creek diverted toward Wharf Street before the building that houses Pomodoro Restaurant. Then the water will be carried by a rectangular culvert south along Wharf Street then turn gently right a third of the distance between Main Street and Lake Ontario. It would then cross private property along short easement to rejoin with the freeflowing open creek.

The portions of the creek that once ran under private buildings would be abandoned by the municipality under this plan, freeing landowners to fill in the cavity below their buildings or otherwise shore up them up. In any event it would no longer be the muncipality’s worry.

County council set aside $640,000 of it gas tax proceeds to fund the project. But preliminary estimates suggest the project may be considerably more expensive that the budget allows.

McAuley says his staff are currently reviewing proposals and expect to report on the status of the Lane Creek project later this month.