HIGH TIME FOR A COMPREHENSIVE BRIGHTS GROVE WATERFRONT VISION

An open letter to Sarnia City Council and Administration from Sarnia Citizens

For decades, successive Sarnia councils, municipalities and upper levels of government have neglected, ignored, or short changed shoreline protection along one of our community’s most priceless public assets and amenities; the right-of-way along old Lakeshore Road, stretching from Telfer Rd. to Perch/Cow Creek.

In recent years, record high lake levels are teaching us expensive lessons about the high costs of this past neglect.

However, high water levels across the Great Lakes have also prompted upper levels of government to finally loosen the purse strings and make funding available to municipalities to address long standing shoreline protection deficiencies.

With these new resources and leadership, it is encouraging to see the City of Sarnia now acting more proactively to tackle our gravely threatened shoreline by approving increased capital spending and striking a committee-of-the-whole (CotW) to discuss how best to get “ahead of the curve” on shoreline protection.

On the eve of the first ever CotW meeting to discuss shoreline protection strategies, we the Citizens of Sarnia, feel that the time is ripe for the City to not just tackle the immediate practical and technical problem of shoreline protection, but for the City of Sarnia to commence a process of consultation aimed at formulating and implementing a long term legacy vision for our priceless Brights Grove public waterfront.

We believe that the entire stretch of publicly owned Brights Grove waterfront, consisting of the old Lakeshore Road right-of-way, from Telfer Rd. to Perch/Cow Creek should be preserved, protected and developed with a multi-use trail for the benefit of our entire community and for future generations, forever!

Toward that end, there are two issues that will require addressing to reestablish this stretch as a contiguous public asset and allow a trail along it:.

1. a pedestrian crossing at the Cull Drain and
   
2. reestablishing public access to the right-of-way (RoW) between the Cull Drain and Mike Weir Park.

We would like to briefly address both issues together, because both seem to have become interlinked in such a way that solutions for one have become, more or less, dependent on solutions for the other.

The “catch-22” that this situation has created, as well as the practical challenges and costs inherent at both locations, increases the risk that the required comprehensive solution will be delayed until both funding and/or political will have been exhausted.

The result could very well be the loss of the Cull Drain crossing, the original Cull Drain Bridge, the public RoW and a severing of one the longest continuous lakeside public waterfront trails in Ontario.  

The Cull Drain Bridge (CDB)

Thanks to the efforts of the Friends of Cull Drain Bridge (FCDB), the Sarnia Heritage Committee, City Council and the City’s Engineering Dept., there is now an initiative underway to achieve approval for volunteers to do restoration work on the original CDB superstructure in Mike Weir Park. The FCDB hope to begin this work by the summer of 2020.

In addition, the FCDB have committed to work with the City to determine whether the existing abutments are still sound, or whether refurbishment, or replacement will be required and/or is practical.

Regardless, of what is discovered about the existing abutments, we know that shoreline work will be required at the Cull Drain outlet. We also know - from several rounds of public consultation (see Report: Item 1 - Pg. 44) - that the (non-RoW resident) stakeholders overwhelmingly desire a crossing be returned over the Cull Drain and that a large majority desire to see the original bridge restored and returned to service at its original location.

Therefore, it only makes sense to include crossing planning and preparations when the Cull Drain outlet shoreline area is dealt with.

We believe that a comprehensive Brights Grove waterfront strategy could lead to synergistic savings of time and resources. Ongoing public consultation for this plan would help drive public awareness and community buy in. Including the crossing requirements in the planning for the adjacent outlet shoreline protection would increase the likelihood of achieving an acceptable and practical plan for the return of a Cull Drain pedestrian crossing.

Old Lakeshore Road Right-of-Way

Likewise, the RoW shoreline, suffers from several impediments that threaten its long term preservation and eventual return of the RoW to public use. Chief among these is the practical issue of heavy equipment access.

Therefore, we would like to suggest a potential solution, which we’ve yet to hear mentioned by the City. Geo-textile tubes might be used to create expedited temporary or permanent revetments, groynes and/or breakwaters (ie artificial shoals).

Rather than undertake the very expensive excavation and backfilling required to access and remediate the problematic right-of-way section of shoreline from the landward side, geo-textile tubing can often be placed and filled from shallow draught dredging barges on the lake.

These tubes could be installed as temporary revetments in problem areas or, even better, as groynes to build up new beach.

This would have several potential benefits. First, once sufficient beach has built up, usually in less than a few years, it becomes a platform from which heavy equipment can operate to install permanent stone revetment and groynes and at a much reduced cost and much less disruptively to adjacent landowners, compared to any landward construction on sloping and unstable terrain.
 

Additionally, using the tubes would allow shoreline protection anywhere along the entire Sarnia waterfront to be commenced expeditiously, despite anticipated shortages of armour stone. They might allow us to accelerate the rate of installation of groynes, by adding them between stone groynes, thus protecting more shoreline, more rapidly. This might save money in armour stone, labour, etc. due to greater scheduling and budget flexibility, less emergency repairs and reducing the need to purchase scarce materials when prices are trending higher. The savings could help offset the tube’s cost.

Finally, most of the properties between the Cull Drain and Mike Weir Park extend beyond the 66’ wide public right-of-way. Virtually all of this lakeside property is currently underwater. Building the beach back up along the lake side of the RoW would provide these landowners with private beaches and help protect the rest of their properties from further erosion.

Regardless of the method employed, reclaimed beach in this area would lower adjacent land owner’s ongoing shoreline protection costs and increase their property area and values.

In Conclusion

We need to understand what we are blessed with here. We need to understand it’s growing potential.

In 2016, the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail reached Lake Huron. This world class multi-use trail is poised to extend for thousands of kilometers along the entire Canadian side of the five Great Lakes and attract thousands of visitors from Canada and around the world.

What few realize is that if the full length of our Brights Grove waterfront, from Telfer Rd. all the way to Perch Creek, was incorporated into the GLWT, it would be the single longest continuous stretch of immediately lakeside adjacent trail on all of Lake Huron!

Along the vast majority of Lake Huron, the trail runs inland too far to even see the lake, except in short glimpse here and there. Not at Goderich, nor Kincardine, nor Southampton, nor Sauble Beach is there a 5 km uninterrupted stretch of directly adjacent lakefront trail.

At Sarnia,  depending on your direction of travel, our section of the GLWT will either be the gateway to Lake Huron or, a traveller’s final intimate encounter with the power and beauty of  Lake Huron before departing for the St. Clair River section.  

Why shouldn’t “Sarnia’s Riviera” and our century old, Sarnia built Old Lakeshore Road Bridge, be the signature memory that GLWT users take home to family and friends?

Brights Grove is also the fastest growing part of Sarnia. It’s obvious that the biggest reason for this is proximity to the lake and our priceless public access to it. Brights Grove will continue to grow and the waterfront trail get busier. Extending the existing trail west to Telfer Rd. would add almost 50 percent more length to it and help provide for this inevitable increasing demand.

Our Brights Grove waterfront trail and all the newly created beaches would be - along with the unsurpassed scenic lookout and trail anchor that a restored Old Lakeshore Road Bridge would again become - an unsurpassed and sustainable legacy for Sarnians to pass on to future generations.

Signed,

Current and future Citizens of Sarnia

P.S. Keep an eye on this petition, launched the day this letter was sent; January 26th, 2020

Friends of Cull Drain Bridge                         Save the Old Lakeshore Right-Of-Way

Glenn Ogilvie Image

Bruce Ritchie Image