The City of Hamilton has been granted an extension of the deadline to complete dredging in Chedoke Creek.
Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) has extended the deadline by 14 months, through Dec. 31, 2022.
A ministry order requires targeted dredging after 24 billion litres of untreated wastewater spilled into the creek through an open gate on a combined sewer overflow tank between 2014 and 2018.
“Unfortunately, the previous time frames were too restrictive given the necessity for extensive consultation with a number of stakeholders”, says Nick Winters, the city’s director of water and wastewater, “as well as coming up with a design that’s going to work.”
Those stakeholders range from the Hamilton Conservation Authority and Royal Botanical Gardens
to Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation, Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Indigenous Nations and partners, including Six Nations of the Grand River and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Council.
Winters says dredging will happen next year, and likely take four to six months to complete.
“Typically you’re only allowed to do in-water work, in any given year, between July 15 and Oct. 15,” says Winters.
“We will need some flexibility with that in 2022.”
Winters adds that those restrictions are “all about environmental protection.”
“Staying out of the water during fish spawning season, and staying out of the water during times that are important for some other inhabitants and organisms”, says Winters.
“We’re doing it for a good reason,” concludes Winters, “to remove material that shouldn’t be there.”
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