Victoria Park lake update

If you’ve been to Victoria Park lately, you will no doubt have noticed the lake has been lowered and surrounded by fences.

It’s in preparation for a big part of the planned improvements; to dredge the 60,000 tonnes of sediment from the bottom of the lake.

A local consultant firm working with the City of Kitchener to develop the plans for the job, Stantec, has come up with what could be an environmental and cost saving solution to re-use that sediment as a nutrient rich topsoil.

Steve Brown, Stantec’s project manager for the Victoria Park lake improvements project told 570 News the sediment will be stacked and piled in rows, likely on the lake-bed itself, “it has to be sampled and we may have to add sawdust to it to stabilize it, because it’s going to be fairly wet.” Then, Brown said before too long, the piles “will be trucked to the [Cambridge] landfill site fairly quickly after.”

There is an agreement in place between Kitchener and the Region of Waterloo for the staff at the landfill site to turn the piles over, “probably every six or eight months or so and we’ll be testing [the sediment] over that period as well.” The entire process, Brown said, should take “approximately three years,” when at that time, Stantec expects the sediment will be usable as topsoil.

Brown said the intent at this point is “the landfill will use it as part of their final cover and finishing of the landfill sites to parts that are capped and closed,” as a nutrient rich soil for the trees and other vegetation the region plants when they re-cap the land.

There is a cost difference on the tipping fees charged at the land-fill in using this methodology, Brown said, “with this use, we’re still being charged tipping fees but they are less.”

Brown is most excited of the broad-scale applications of this sediment management strategy, “because there are other sites that would be in a similar situation, the storm water management ponds through-out the city of Kitchener and elsewhere across the province could have their sediment dealt with in the same way,” he said.

“As far as we know this is the first time this type of thing has been tried. We’re really excited to be a part of this and see how it comes out.”

Brown said weather permitting, “they plan to get the shovels in the ground next week.”

Stantec is the consultant that developed the plan for the Victoria Park lake improvements and prepared a tender along with the city. One general contractor was awarded the contract, Conestoga-Rovers & Associates, who is sub-contracting out the various jobs involved.