Essa Township is “targeting” late September completion for the 5 line work

From early morning to late afternoon, from Monday to Friday, work to repair a massive slope failure on line 5 in Essa commune continues.

After a month of rebuilding, using the municipality’s resources to reduce costs, the site is slowly starting to take shape to return – to what it was before a torrential storm destroyed about 70 meters of the thoroughfare.

Two massive excavators, one on each side of the small stream that runs 12 to 15 meters below the surface of the road, are in constant motion – picking, clearing and moving thousands of cubic meters of earth in an effort to create a suitable base on which to be able to rebuild the slope.

It’s tedious work, but township officials hope it will be completed before the end of September.

“We are targeting September 20 for completion, weather permitting,” said Michael Mikael, Essa’s chief administrative officer. “Rain always delays construction, especially for road work.”

According to township officials, a rainstorm in early April that lasted nearly 24 hours caused the slope to break several miles south of County Road 90, west of Angus.

Officials said the initial failure was about 50 feet long. This was compounded by another landslide that extended the damage by another 20 meters.

As a result of the failure of the slope, a 90-meter channel carrying the small stream under the road was also damaged. Although it was initially thought that the canal could be reused, it had to be replaced when officials discovered that it had suffered more severe damage than expected.

“This is the biggest slope failure the community has ever experienced,” Mikael said. “(A) total volume of 55,000 cubic meters has been removed from the site and a full 100 meters of culvert (corrugated steel pipe) is being installed to replace the damaged culvert.”

Mikael said the repair will require the township to bring in more than 60,000 cubic meters of man-made fill to be placed in layers to stabilize the proposed embankment.

“We have to remove/place over 120,000 cubic meters of dirt and install a cofferdam (an enclosure built into a body of water to allow the enclosed area to be pumped or drained) for dewatering,” said Mikael.

“In addition to this, we will install a new drainage system and realign the profile of the road to be paved,” added the CAO.

According to Mikael, the commune had to wait four weeks for the canal to be built. It was delivered in eight sections due to its size.

“We are in the process of installing the new channel now before we start filling with engineered fill,” said Mikael. “We’re 60 percent of the way through the project.”

Mikael said a project of this size, with limited land to access the collapsed slope, usually takes several months to complete.

The repair, using township resources and personnel, will cost the municipality between $330,000 and $450,000. If the township had opted to use third-party contractors, it would have cost an additional $300,000, town officials said.