Campbell’s Bay residents got a peek on Thursday at the plan its municipality hopes will increase the town’s resilience to climate change, improve road safety and beautify its downtown core.
The public consultation was the second hosted by CREDDO, the Outaouais environmental organization with which the municipality has partnered to develop the plan for greening the municipality’s downtown core.
Last June the municipality announced $70,000 in funding from Quebec’s environment ministry to undergo the first phase of a project to develop a greening master plan, aimed at reducing the impact of climate change on lived environments.
As part of this program, Outaouais environmental organization CREDDO began mapping out a plan to reduce the impacts of urban heat islands in the municipality and improve stormwater management.
In January, CREDDO employees invited residents to give feedback about what kinds of infrastructure they would like to see and which areas they would like to see improved in this greening effort, then created a draft based on the feedback.
The draft, which was shared with the public on Thursday evening, proposes work for priority areas highlighted by residents in the first consultation, including Front Street, Leslie Street, and near the Maurice Beauregard Memorial Park.
It shows certain areas near the waterfront could see trees, shrubs and perennials planted to improve flood management, while other streets in town could see varying amounts of greenery and integrated rainwater management put in.
The draft proposed areas where green outcroppings could narrow various roads, including three along Leslie Street and one at each extreme of the downtown core on Front Street.
It also showed digital renderings of examples of various kinds of infrastructure that could be installed, including planting trees, installing green parking zones, and narrowing streets using vegetation.
Anta Kama, the project lead with CREDDO, said the options presented were not final, and the intention was to hear from the community and council about what kinds of infrastructure and locations they wanted to see prioritized.
“We will start meeting with [the council] next week to make sure that we are aligned on the prioritization and that we actually select the sites that we’re going to work on,” she said, adding that they will use the feedback to create a final plan to be presented to council late this summer.
Campbell’s Bay director general Sarah Bertrand said the draft plan appeared to reflect what the community asked for at the first consultation.
“It’s about reducing heat islands, greening mineral areas, as well as helping manage our stormwater drainage in conjunction with road safety,” she said.
She said a safety study done with engineers a few years ago found a need to make the Leslie Street corridor safer, as a large number of students walk the street to and from St. John’s Elementary School.
“If we can enhance the road safety of our streets for our users, that’s what would make the option prioritized,” she said, adding that the municipality will not make any final decisions about what to prioritize until the plan is finalized in September.
“We don’t know what options are going to be chosen [and] we don’t know the price to those options,” she said.
As part of a provincial grant for the Oasis program approved last spring, Campbell’s Bay will contribute 20 per cent of the cost of creating the plan, with the province contributing the rest.
Bertrand said once the plans are finalized, the municipality will then be able to apply for a second grant through the program which can be used to go out for tender and then also complete the construction work.
“Most likely the council will have to secure additional funding,” she said, adding that there are grants from the provincial transportation ministry and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities available as well.
She said the plan the municipality will get out of the program will hopefully allow it to apply for additional grants in the future.
“This shows that the municipality has already begun [the work], we’re serious, and we’ve already invested money and time into it,” she said.
CREDDO will spend this summer reviewing feedback from Thursday’s consultation and will present the final version of the plan to council at the end of the summer, before unveiling the plan to the public at the third and final consultation in September.
Upon the program’s completion in September, Campbell’s Bay will join Thurso as the only two Outaouais municipalities to have completed the greening plan program.
