Rehabilitation work on the North Shore Trail in Port Elgin has gotten underway and a portion of the road is closed.
Saugeen Shores Mayor Luke Charbonneau says, it’s a continuation of the work the Town had been doing in previous years along the North Shore Road between Port Elgin and Southampton to repair several years of erosion damage to the shoreline road and trail.
“We did a portion of the trail to the south of the location we’re working on now already, and so we’re just continuing to make our way down the north shore trail, placing armour stone along the water’s edge and rebuilding the slope up to the trail, and we’re also building a bit of a switchback access down to the water’s edge in an area down there,” says Charbonneau.
He adds, “The purpose of the project is to both reinforce that trail and to protect the road for the long-term.”
Charbonneau says work on this particular section of shoreline and trail will cost roughly $700,000.
He adds, there’s more work to be done to reinforce other parts of the road and trail, explaining, “The whole project, if we choose to fully implement it, will be a $3.1 million project but it’s undertaken in pieces year after year, and so there will be several years and several budgets between now and and then. We’ll take the project piece by piece.”
A release from the Town says, the plan is to place large armour stone along the water’s edge and then rebuild the slope up to the existing trail. The Town says crews will then reconstruct a three-metre-wide trail beside the road.
They say starting the work later in the summer will avoid impacting any spawning fish.
The work is expected to last until mid-to-late December.
Charbonneau adds, “I’m looking forward to seeing it complete. It’s an important project. It’s a trail we all love.”
The road is completely closed to vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians from Bushwood Lane to Hilly Lane.