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Blocking the road
You will find a rather unusual advertisement on the back page of this issue of the Cosmos. It’s not every day that a government at any level, upon embarking on a construction project that entails the temporary closure of a highway, takes out an ad encouraging the public to take the “scenic paved” sideroads of the detour, and patronize the businesses in the village on the other side of the closure. The ad even lists the businesses, all six of them, and has a detailed map of the detour to ensure that drivers won’t get waylaid in their quest to visit the village.
The reason for the ad (and you’ll probably see it for the duration of the construction) is fairly straightforward: the Region of Durham, which is responsible for the road to Leaskdale, has egg on its face. After the ridiculous and disastrous four-month closure of the same road last fall, which took twice as long as it was supposed to, and put a major monkey wrench into the international conference the Lucy Maud Montgomery Society had planned for several years, the Region dropped into Leaskdale last Wednesday afternoon to circulate a “Public Notice” informing citizens and business owners that they were once again closing Highway 1 - beginning June 25, only two business days in the future.
Understandably, the people of Leaskdale went through the roof. After enduring last year’s fiasco, they were once again going to face the highway’s closure, and during the height of the summer season? The notice said the road would be closed for four weeks, but you could forgive the locals, based on last year’s experience, for doubting that optimistic timetable, and expecting a loss of business for virtually the whole summer, the first full tourist season for the LMMSO’s fully restored manse and its foray into summer theatre. Doug Watson, owner of the Leaskdale store, was incensed. After being without his gas pumps most of the winter, the traffic would be blocked again.
Our reps at the Region, Mayor O’Connor and Councillor Jack Ballinger, pleaded ignorance of the project, another culvert replacement mandated by the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority, even though it had been approved by both the Public Works Committee (which Mr. Ballinger sits on) and Region Council. The Township’s public works chief, Ben Kester, told the Cosmos he knew the project was coming, but didn’t know when, so he didn’t tell anyone on Council or in Leaskdale.
So now the Region is very sorry for the lack of notice (hence the ad), and told the Cosmos they will ensure their contractors give them more notice in future. Couldn’t the project be delayed till after Labour Day? Well, no, because the LSRCA (for environmental reasons) gave them a window of June 1 to October 1 to do the work and, fall weather being what it is, starting Sept. 4 couldn’t guarantee being done by Oct. 1.
The whole situation begs a lot of questions: Why didn’t the project start as soon as possible, June 1? Why is the project so urgent, and why such a narrower window than last year’s much larger culvert job? Why weren’t our reps in Whitby aware of the project? Why would Mr. Kester, knowing what the people of Leaskdale went through so recently, not give them as much warning as possible?
If one were cynical, one might be tempted to think that the reason for two days notice was to circumvent any possible political action from stopping the project altogether; the public notices hit the street only an hour after most of the LMMSO board left for a conference in PEI. It’s interesting to speculate what might have happened if they’d been given even a week to fight.
The Region says this summer’s project is not the last on Highway 1. We would suggest that remains to be seen.
July 14, 2011
