It is not clear yet when work around Reay Creek Dam and the pond it created will wrap up.
Frederica Dupuis, senior advisor, media relations for Transport Canada, said in a note to the Peninsula News Review that Transport Canada is working with the Town of Sidney and the contractor to update the project schedule.
Dupuis made that comment as Transport Canada confirmed last week that the remediation of the pond will not be finished by Sept. 15, but did not give a new date. Crews faced a completion deadline of Sept. 15 to accommodate the fact Reay Creek is a salmon habitat.
Sau Sau Liu, a senior communication advisor with Transport Canada, said last week the pond work would be completed after Sidney had finished its upgrades to the dam.
Jenn Clary, Sidney’s director of engineering, said last week that the municipality has approached the Department of Fisheries to extend the Sept. 15 deadline for work in the water to help complete the dam in 2020. She also added that “above water work for both projects” will extend past Sept. 15.
RELATED: Upgrades to fish habitat in Sidney won’t meet deadline
The separate but related projects are happening simultaneously. Sidney hired QM Environmental to renovate the dam at the same time the company did remediation work for the federal government, which has acknowledged its responsibility for polluting the pond.
The choice to do the work concurrently came with the promise of limiting the ecological damage to the pond, because crews would only have to drain the pond once, not twice.
RELATED:Sidney joins federal government in Reay Creek improvements
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While Sidney council voted to hire QM Environmental on Aug. 17, both sides did not sign the necessary paperwork until Sept. 2.
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