Bruce County council is changing the timeline of a plan to reconstruct a county road and realign another at the south end of Port Elgin.
The county's transportation and environmental services committee voted to combine the first two phases of an $8.5-million plan to reconstruct Bruce Rd. 25 and to realign Bruce Rd. 33 to the east to line up with a planned extension of Bruce St.
Saugeen Shores Mayor Mike Smith says storm sewer work planned for this year will now be combined with road reconstruction of Bruce Rd. 25 between Shipley Ave. and the future Bruce St. and will begin early next year.
The storm sewer will empty into Lake Huron at the popular Gobles Grove beach and Smith says county and municipal staff need a little extra time to make sure they get it right.
"[There's] some concerns about the outlet of the drainage, what that will look like, that's a very popular beach down there so our staff at the town and the county have been working on talking to the people down there trying to come up with a really nice, authentic design so that it's a compliment to the beach," says Smith.
The delay in the start of the project will not impact future phases, as Smith says reconstruction of the remainder of Bruce Road 25 is planned for 2020, followed by the realignment of Bruce Rd. 33 in 2021.
Smith says it will be nice to see the project through to completion, pointing out the two county roads serve as the alternate route to and from the Bruce Power site when Hwy. 21 is closed, so improving the safety of the route is a major priority for both the county and municipality.
"It's a signal that yeah, we're going to start to move forward, hopefully, those two projects will be done next year and following two years, the other two [phases] will follow," says Smith. "We've been on this a long time, it's going to be nice when it's done."
