Swift Current Saskatchewan - A municipal heritage property in Swift Current requires some major restoration work to ensure its preservation.
 
The Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) dam, which is located at Riverside Park, is one of the oldest permanent structures in Swift Current.
 
It was originally built in 1888 to provide a steady supply of water to steam locomotives on CP's main line.
 
The rehabilitation of the structure was discussed at a regular City of Swift Current council meeting, 6 May 2019.
 
Councillors approved a contract agreement with Timber Restoration Services for carrying out the restoration work at a total cost of $477,816.34 (PST included, GST excluded).
 
The City has allocated a total of $725,000 in the capital budget for this project, which includes engineering, construction, and construction management.
 
Mitch Minken, the City's general manager of infrastructure and operations, felt the total project cost will be less than the budgeted amount.
 
The City already spent about $110,000 on engineering costs and now there will only be the expenses for the construction work, construction management, and any unforeseen items that might be required after the start of the rehabilitation work.
 
"We're really happy to be in this position where we're ready to start and get this thing back together before we have any major problems with it," he said after the meeting.
 
"The ends where the weir meets the banks in particular needs some rehabilitation really badly."
 
The goal is to carry out the rehabilitation work before there is any more damage to the historic structure and the river banks.
 
"It could go around the weir washout, the edges of it, and go around if we don't get it all buttoned up, or the actual structure could collapse as well, without the supports that are in there," he said.
 
The City's previous attempts to repair the dam were not successful due to the poor state of the underlying structure.
 
"Back in 2015 we made an attempt to do some repairs," he recalled.
 
"We replaced a bunch of the planks, but it turned that the underlying structure, the supports that those planks adhere to, that they're connected to, are rotten as well."
 
More boards were washed away during the 2016 spring runoff and the City decided to carry out a detailed assessment of the structure.
 
"It's been an interesting journey, because there's not a lot of people in the business of wood restoration such as this and because it's a heritage property we were pretty limited in what we could do to do any kind of a replacement with something other than what is actually there," he said.
 
"So it took some time for us to get connected with the right people to do a proper full inspection of what's going on and do a proper design of what needs to be replaced."
 
Engineering consulting company WSP partnered with Wood Research Development to carry out an inspection to determine the heritage requirements of the project, and to prepare detailed engineering designs for the rehabilitation work.
 
This part of the project was completed in 2018.
 
The inspection rated the overall condition of the structure as very poor.
 
Cavities were identified in the main structural elements of the dam, many of the top deck planks have become dislodged, and the remaining planks are deteriorating.
 
The investigation indicated that 75 percent of the structure requires replacement.
 
The restoration work will be based on the oldest available drawings of the dam, which dates back to 1920.
 
It indicates that some improvements may have been made to the structure at that time.
 
"Basically we're going to be building, like for like, in using the same wood products that are there today," he said.
 
"So even the ones that won't be seen, the supporting timbers that are in underneath. They'll all be wood timbers as well."
 
Timber Restoration Services is the only company that submitted a bid for this project, which will include the re-construction of the deteriorated elements of the substructure, kind-for-kind replacement of deck planks, and creek bank restoration.
 
The work is scheduled to start in mid-July and it will be completed in early October.
 
There will be a two-week construction break in August to accommodate the activities in Riverside Park during the Western Canada Summer Games.
 
"It's just going to be very, very, busy there," Minken said.
 
"The streets are going to be closed and there's going to be a number of people around there. So the workers wouldn't have much room to work anyway. We'll just get them out of there while this is going on and avoid any noise issues or anything like that."
 
Matthew Liebenberg.