Concrete flood wall repairs combined in Cambridge, Ontario

The City of Cambridge and the Grand River Conservation Authority (GRCA) are joining forces on two concrete construction efforts that will see the projects combined into a single tender.

The project began with an aim to repair a 13-metre section of flood wall at the end of the city’s Dickson Street that had begun to crack and shift. Engineers with GRCA estimated it would cost more than $200,000 to build a new concrete wall over the old one.

Once the project was announced, Cambridge city council began to examine ways in which the work could be combined with the city’s long-term plan of improving access to its heritage waterway. In January, council approved a plan that would incorporate a new stairway into the wall and see a 200-metre-long winding concrete path of up to two metres wide constructed at river level. The estimated cost of that project was just north of $350,000.

“We don’t always get opportunities like this,” says Dwight Boyd, engineering director at the GRCA. “With the repair work already planned along the base of the wall we could see the economies of scale we could achieve by integrating the river-level walkway and stairs and proceeding in partnership with the City of Cambridge. The city asked us to manage and co-ordinate the project under a single tender, with the costs apportioned to each party after the work is completed.”

The initial system of berms and concrete flood walls was constructed in the mid-1980s with the focus simply on flood control and bank stabilization, not public access. Efforts during the past decade have seen a renewed focus on public access to the river. The new construction would connect the stairs near the city’s Carnegie Library with the city’s Mill Race Park.

“It gives us an opportunity to get people closer to the river, which we like to do whenever the opportunity presents itself,” says Kent McVittie, community services commissioner with the city.

It’s not the first time such a partnership has been undertaken by GRCA. In a recent construction project on the Nafziger Road Bridge over the Nith River, the authority worked with the Region of Waterloo to relocate a gate station that had previously been located on the bridge itself.

The GRCA is currently working through the final design of the flood wall and walkway, with tenders going out shortly.

“Our anticipated construction window is for the fall of this year, likely early September after the tourism season winds down and there are relatively low flows in the river,” says Boyd. “The work could be completed as early as October.”

Boyd says the GRCA is open to considering any such future combined projects. “It’s not only the cost savings that we benefit from,” he says. “There’s the intangible benefit of creating good working relationships between stakeholders and the opportunity to actually meet people and learn from each other.”