Stantec is undertaking the next stage of a multi-year planning, preliminary design and environmental assessment (EA) process to determine how to best overhaul or replace the declining century-old swing bridge that connects Manitoulin Island to the mainland of Ontario.
In August, the engineering firm notified the Town of Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands (NEMI) in a briefing letter that it would be starting the archaeological and geotechnical assessment portions of the project.
The Stage 2 archaeological assessment – a requirement of the Ministry of Heritage, Sport, Tourism and Culture Industries – will involve digging test pits, down at least five centimetres into the subsoil, and screening soil through six-millimetre hardware cloth to determine if there’s any cultural material present that needs to be collected.
For the geotechnical investigation, Stantec will drill both in-water and on-land boreholes to “determine the conditions of the subsurface and bedrock materials in the area,” the company noted.
Information gathered from this testwork will be included in Stantec’s final report, which is expected later this year.
The company was selected in 2018 as the successful bidder on the $2.5-million contract after the MTO decided a year earlier that the bridge had degraded to a point that it would eventually need a major overhaul, or should be replaced entirely.
Considered a landmark of Manitoulin Island, which is situated in the upper portion of Georgian Bay in Lake Huron, the space is the only permanent structure connecting the island to the mainland.
Dating back to 1912, the single-lane structure was designed by the Algoma Eastern Railway to handle rail traffic only, but was modified to handle both rail and vehicular traffic by 1946.
Rail traffic ceased entirely by the 1980s, and the MTO took over operation of the structure in 1983.
