New drainage pond planned for cemetery land

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This article was published 08/07/2022 (1181 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The city’s next round of drainage improvements for the south end will be focused in and around the Brandon Municipal Cemetery.

A tender posted to the city’s website on Thursday is looking for an engineering firm to help with design for the project.

“Located within the existing Southeast Drainage Basin, the City of Brandon Cemetery remains as the largest remaining area of undeveloped or undedicated land available for a stormwater retention facility,” one of the tender document reads.

“The drainage network within the basin is inadequate and incomplete, with design underway to expand and continue the network east of this proposed work through a separate assignment.”

The cemetery is located at 1901 18th St., south of Canadian Tire and across the road from Landmark Cinemas. The possibility of installing a drainage pond was first brought up in the 2003 Southeastern Drainage Study commissioned by the city.

The document further states that while stormwater systems were built during residential development south of Maryland Avenue between 18th and First Streets since 2001, and preparation work was done for the installation of better drainage infrastructure, construction never got off the ground.

One of the obstacles was that the creation of a retention pond at the cemetery site would require the movement of Manitoba Hydro primary cables going through the area. The city has requested that Manitoba Hydro move the cables along the eastern and northern perimeters of the land.

A diagram of the city’s preferred design for the proposed retention pond shows it being created on the far eastern side of the cemetery land, south of Aberdeen Avenue and north of Maryland Avenue.

The project would also include the construction of storm sewers to drain water from the nearby neighbourhoods into the pond.

In a preliminary report prepared for the city by Winnipeg-based firm Tetra Tech, it is stated that the dimensions of the drainage pond will be 163.1 metres long by 88.3 metres wide.

One of the largest concerns for the project identified in the report is potential oil contamination, with the land comprising cemetery and the nearby Canadian Tire being the former site of a refinery and with several gas stations within 500 metres of the land.

Tetra Tech’s report states that at the proposed site of the drainage pond, it “does not appear that this contaminated soil contains a significant volume of residual petroleum hydrocarbon impacts that could be leaching into the groundwater system on a continuous basis.”

However, regular testing to monitor the situation is advised.

Alternative proposals for drainage ponds in the area include a shallow dry pond above groundwater level at 900 Balmoral Ave., a deep naturalized wet pond at the same location or expanding the proposed pond for the cemetery so that it would be capable of handling a one-in-100-year storm event.

The city anticipates the winning bid for the project will be announced in August and hopes that work will be ready for tender this year.

Construction of land drainage relief sewers along Maryland Avenue and Magnolia Drive related to the project will be completed in future years, with the design work expected to go to tender for that project in Spring 2023.

As for the cemetery project design work, applications for that tender closed on July 29 at 5 p.m.

Overall, the city’s plans for improving drainage in the southeast include the construction of more drainage ponds, building new lift stations and building a new drainage outlet into the Assiniboine River.

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