Etwell Rd will be fully closed just north of Jarvies Rd until mid-February for a twin culvert replacement at Wallington Creek.
The work is necessary now to prevent a collapse in the spring, said the District’s director of engineering and transportation, Mark Misko, in a District engineering and public works committee meeting on Jan. 19.
Access to properties will be maintained via the north or south end of Etwell Road during construction, resulting in about a 25-minute detour for some residents. There will be no EMS through-access.
“District patrol staff noticed that we were getting some material loss in the roadway in the area of these culverts and subsequently followed up with a full structural inspection,” said Misko. “The culverts are essentially on the verge of collapsing and failing.”
Although winter isn’t the ideal time for the work to be completed, Misko acknowledged, “holding off on replacing these could put us in a worse situation in the spring. If these culverts would have failed completely, we’d be managing not only high water levels, we’d also be managing a road closure at the same time, so the decision was made to look to replace these, not as an emergency…it’s a planned closure for about three weeks with a 25-minute detour.”
He added that the issue with the culverts isn’t one of capacity, but rather their structural integrity.
Fidelity Engineering and Construction was selected to complete the work via an RFQ (Request For Quote) process. District staff did not go out for full tender for the project due to the urgency of the repairs, but rather made a request for pricing. The company has not been hired by the District previously, but has completed projects within Muskoka for the Ministry of Transportation, noted Misko.
Crews were on site as of Tuesday, Jan. 18, he added.
Councillor Rick Maloney wanted assurances there would be warranties on the work, given that it’s being done in the winter.
“I agree with you,” replied Misko. “Winter is not an ideal time to be doing construction work… There are some construction techniques we can use…there wasn’t really a concern with compaction in this area. Roadworks have a standard one-year warranty… so we do have assurances that if there’s any deficiencies in the work this spring due to the timing of the work, that will get rectified when they are identified.”
Councillor Phil Harding asked if this culvert has somehow fallen through the cracks in terms of inspection. “I thought we were putting on a more regimented routine inspection schedule” as a result of the culvert collapse on Hwy 169 in 2015, he said. “It seems this is another culvert that has somewhat been missed in a needs priority survey. I’m just wondering how we get to it as an emergency… we’re not inspecting culverts on an annual basis to be a little bit more proactive.”
Following that collapse, District staff did conduct inspections, said Misko, with priority on larger pipes “because the consequences of failure are a lot more significant than some of our smaller culverts.”
The Wallington Creek twin culverts are among the smaller-sized inventory that staff are working their way through. “There’s well over 1,000 of these, I think we’ve got about 3,000…,” said Misko, adding that if staff notice an issue like material loss on the roadway or a small sinkhole starting to form, it gets moved up the chain for analysis.
Councillor Brian Thompson wondered about the impact of an increasing number of extreme weather events. “So something that might have passed the test two years ago has been further compromised simply because of the incredible weather events we’ve been experiencing lately. I’m anticipating this might be an ongoing problem where you’re going to have emergency situations crop up that you had not anticipated.”
Misko replied: “We’re seeing more intense weather events. We’re doing our best to constantly assess these culverts and analyze them from a capacity perspective. Will we catch all of them? I doubt that. There’s always going to be a few that we may get a storm and there’s a beaver dam or something else that exacerbates that culvert’s capacity and there will be some reactive measures that we’ll have to take with respect to how we manage this. We are trying to be as proactive as possible with our culvert appraisals and qualifying our inventory and making sure that we can avoid as much of this as we can.”
He added that the Wallington Creek culverts had simply come to the end of their life. “The culvert’s been performing to date, it just came to end of life and started to deteriorate based on the age of the structure, so we identified that and looked to replace it immediately…
“It’s tough to predict what the weather’s going to do into next year and in future years. We are seeing that type of trend so we are trying our best to make sure that the information we have at hand will help us avoid that down the future.”
Committee approved a motion to adjust the capital budget be amended to help in replacement of twin culverts as noted in the first table below, and that the source of funding be adjusted per the second table.
The staff report is here.
See the road closure notice here.
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