The Municipality of Chatham-Kent is moving forward with the next steps to help with flooding along Erie Shore Drive.
On Monday night, council approved a recommendation to submit a request for proposal for an engineering consultant to prepare a preliminary report examining better use, maintenance and repair of the Burk Drainage Scheme.
The work will be done under the Drainage Act of Ontario, which provides a well-established and legislated process for projects involving municipal drains.
According to Director of Drainage, Asset and Waste Management Tim Dick, one of the benefits of the Drainage Act is that the consultant will be a third party.
"The whole idea of the Drainage Act is the expectation of the independent engineer and the lack of influence or leverage applied by the municipal councils. Council is to stay out of the process, let the engineer work," he explained. "That's not to say that council or the constituent that may be involved down the line don't have a say, both parties can get a say. [However,] you can't dictate specific things to the engineer, but you may have options to refer the report back for further investigation."
According to Dick, the report will help narrow down the scope of what the solutions will cost and how the drainage system can be improved and maintained. At this point, the investigation would only be looking at solutions within the existing Burke Drainage Scheme and not focus on bringing in new solutions along the shoreline.
"What this report will tell us is, this is the direction we should be going that's most cost-effective," Dick explained. "If we don't authorize the report, we will never have that information and will continue to struggle with that entire area."
Dick added that it's difficult to predict any timelines at this point, but noted that there will be "many" opportunities for resident consultation along the way.
In March 2020, the municipal public works department completed “Phase 1” of its efforts to stabilize the existing roadway and dike along Erie Shore Drive to mitigate the risk of dike failure. This came after a state of emergency was declared along the roadway and a voluntary evacuation was issued after municipal administration revealed that there was a five to 40 per cent chance that the Erie Shore Drive dike could fail.
General Manager of Engineering and Infrastructure Thomas Kelly said the municipality has reached the point where it has to come up with a more sustainable solution.
"We really need a long term plan on this," he said. "The solution we have out there is not a long-term plan. This particular work that we're authorizing is step one of the process. It says what we really need to do long-term with this."
Administration will next be returning to council with results from the request for proposal and if it's approved, work can begin on the preliminary report.
"The next decision we will ask council to do, we're going to ask you to make a decision on the request for proposal for selecting the engineering firm. They'll come back with the preliminary report and give you some of the high-level cost estimates," said Kelly. "Then the decision will be, do we want to go with the full-blown report. That's where the costs will really be high. The costs that we're talking about at this stage, really they're manageable and they give us good direction on the blueprint of what the direction we need to go in as a municipality is."