In addition to major road work being undertaken on Third St. West and the eastern side of Scott Street near the Memorial Sports Complex, the Town of Fort Frances is undertaking several additional projects as the weather warms.
Town of Fort Frances Manager of Operations and Facilities Travis Rob says people will notice contractors working around the town in other areas as well.
“A couple of big things we have going on, we’re doing a refurb on the water tower,” Rob said.
“So people are going to start seeing activity happening there, probably in the next couple of weeks. I think they’re planning on starting the first week in May.”
Work also continues on the roof at the Memorial Sports Centre.
“We’re going to be doing a fairly substantial roof rehab at the Memorial Sports Centre so you’re going to be seeing that happening,” Rob said.
“And then we have a bit of work left at the splash park.”
This includes fixing the fence near the corner of the park which was hit by a car not long after its installation last year.
After school is out there will be work being done on the traffic lights at Armit Avenue and Second Street as well as Crowe Avenue and Second Street. Several roads in the north end of town will also be seeing surface treatments.
Another big project will be work at the water treatment plant on Agamiing Drive.
“It’s a regulatory compliance thing,” Rob said
“Right now, when we backwash our filters, which is something we do regularly to keep them clean and keep them filtering effectively, our backwash water goes out and back into the river where the source water comes from. There’s new regulation from the federal government, which limits the chlorine that can be discharged into the natural environment. So we disinfect our drinking water with chlorine. So this is basically a retention tank, so that when we do our backwash, there’ll be a tank there where we can let the chlorine dissipate out of the water before we discharge it back to the environment.”
There will also be shoreline remediation taking place along the riverside providing the currents cooperate as they haven’t since the floods of the spring and summer of 2022.
“We have the shoreline remediation still from the flood that’s going to happen along the riverfront this summer,” Rob said.
“Hopefully we have lower flows in the river this year than we did last year. That’s why we didn’t get it done last year as the flows are really, really high, just way too late into the season.”
“It was flowing pretty good all summer long, because we’re working in the water. We have, through our permits with the ministry and Department of Fisheries, we have very specific windows of time when we can work,” he added.
“So unfortunately, last year, by the time the flows came down, we just didn’t have the time to get the work done.”
The necessary work includes bolstering the shoreline where there was a significant amount of erosion during the high water period three years ago now from around the overpass over to the Sorting Gap Marina.
For more information on the main road work projects and detours that will take place in Fort Frances this summer have a look at the front page of the April 23 edition of the Fort Frances Times or access fftimes.com.
