Proven Results: Sawmill River

This week’s proven results is a project that is very near and dear to me: daylighting the Sawmill River.

The Sawmill River project first came across my radar before I was even on Council, when I was a sort of citizen activist writing for Spacing Atlantic and HRM was trying to decide whether to daylight the River or not. The idea of bringing Dartmouth’s buried waterway back above ground was captivating and quickly took on a life of its own, gathering significant public interest. HRM opted to proceed with Phase 1 in 2016 just after I arrived in office as a newly elected rookie Councillor.

Thanks to some time-sensitive federal funding, there really wasn’t much time to stop and think about Phase 1’s design in as much detail as I would have liked. I barely had a chance to find my desk before HRM had gone from “maybe we’ll daylight the river” to “we’re going to daylight the river and it starts in five months.” It all happened really quickly, which gave me lots to worry about at the time. Parks nudged some of the blunt edges off the engineers first draft and despite the added risk that arose from the speedy circumstances, Phase 1 turned out really well.

As the dust settled on Phase 1 in 2018, it was clear that Phase 2 was a when not an if. For Phase 2 though, we had something that was missing in Phase 1: time. Time to really work through everything we wanted to achieve. Over the last couple of years, HRM staff have worked closely with Halifax Water on a much more ambitious Sawmill River project that incorporates so much more than just daylighting the river. Phase 2 of the project involves:

• Daylighting the River
• Connecting the Harbour Trail to Sullivan’s Pond
• Building a new intersection at Alderney and Dundas and extending Dundas Street into the Dartmouth Cove area, enabling redevelopment of the derelict industrial lands on Canal Street and Skokomul Street (formerly Maitland Street)
• Closing Mill Lane (Dundas will become the main access point to Canal Street) and creating a new park in its place
• Closing Irishtown Road to create a new pond in Starr Park
• Re-configuring the intersection of Portland/Alderney/Prince Albert
• Restoring fish passage to Sullivan’s Pond, which when combined with replacement of the Hawthorne culverts and a fish ladder around the Lock, will restore fish passage to whole Banook/Micmac watershed for the first time since the 1800s

This project has it all. It connects the trails, fixes up the road network, adds more park and green space in our growing Downtown, helps open up derelict former industrial lands for redevelopment, and helps repair the environmental damage that our predecessors did to our lakes. The scale of it all is really significant. It’s the biggest investment in Downtown Dartmouth since Alderney Landing was built in the 1990s. It’s the Cogswell of Dartmouth. I’m very excited for everything the Sawmill River project will bring to our Downtown.

A picture can be worth a thousand words so a video must be a novel. Check out this flyover of the Sawmill River project to get an idea of what it will look like when it’s complete.

I wanted to make a special mention of the Sawmill River project’s environmental benefits, and what restoring fish passage could mean for water quality. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans is expecting that once fish passage is restored, Gaspereau will reestablish a run into Banook and Micmac that could eventually number in the 100,000s. Studies in Maine have shown that when Gaspereau are reintroduced into a watershed, they improve the water quality. This is because Gaspereau swim up stream, spawn, and then return to the sea. Their young hatch and spend several months maturing in freshwater before they too head for the ocean. Since the fish mature in freshwater, this cycle exports excess nutrients to the ocean in fish form! In one lake in Maine, researchers found that Gaspereau were transporting a whopping 25% of the watershed’s entire annual phosphorus load. Not bad for some relatively small fish!

If DFO’s predictions come true, the 100,000s of Gaspereau coming upstream in the spring will help to clean up our lakes, benefiting everyone who uses Banook and Micmac for recreation. To get a sense of what that could be like, check out this video that I snapped a few years ago while out for a bike ride on the Shubie Trail. This is at the end of Lake William at Portobello, on the end of the Shubencadie waterway that’s not cut off from the sea, and it was absolutely teeming with Gaspereau!

After years of planning, and thanks to a substantial $14.1 million funding commitment from the Province, Phase 2 of the Sawmill River is finally a go. Construction started a few weeks ago on the diversion line to redirect water around the Canal. Phase 2 has been divided into two parts (two different construction tenders). Halifax Water has details and schedule of Phase 2, Part 1 up on their website here https://www.halifaxwater.ca/project/sawmill-creek-storm-sewer-replacement

I’m very excited about the Sawmill River project and all that it will bring to Downtown Dartmouth. I’m proud of the contribution I made alongside other community leaders, federal and provincial politicians, and HRM staff. The Sawmill River is truly on its way to being a bubbling part of Downtown Dartmouth again.

Dartmouth, we do great things together!