Don Forbes is the project director for soil remediation and earthworks at the Port Lands’ Flood Protection Project. The $1.354-billion project has been nearly a decade in the making.
Workers look on as water begins to flow for the first time into the new Don River. The city has dug a kilometre-long river valley through the Port Lands lined with meadows, marshes, wetlands, upland forests and parks. It will flow south from the Keating Channel across Commissioners Street, then west out a renaturalized river mouth into the Inner Harbour of Lake Ontario.
Don Forbes is the project director for soil remediation and earthworks at the Port Lands’ Flood Protection Project. The $1.354-billion project has been nearly a decade in the making.
A steady stream of water, like a large drinking fountain, pushed through the grate of a concrete drain nestled in a wall of strategically-placed rocks at the mouth of the Don River Wednesday morning.
One of North America’s largest infrastructure projects in the Port Lands includes the long-awaited “naturalization” of the mouth of the Don River, with a goal to reconnect it to Lake Ontario. The $1.354-billion Flood Protection Project has been nearly a decade in the making and when the pumps roared to life at 10:30 Wednesday morning, it marked a major milestone.
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The dozens of workers in work vests and hard hats gathered at the closed-off site near the intersection of Cherry and Commissioners Streets clapped and smiled from ear-to-ear when the water began flowing.
“For years, I’ve joked about how my job is to dig a hole and fill it with water,” Don Forbes, Waterfront Toronto’s project director overseeing soil remediation and earthworks, told the Star in an exclusive tour of the site.
“After (more than) six years, we’re finally filling it.”
Though the turning on of the proverbial tap by drawing water through the Polson Slip into the Don River’s future riverbed seemed underwhelming, it would have been too risky to increase the pressure.
Filling the 1.3-kilometre river valley will be a gradual two-week process, according to Forbes. Anything other than a controlled process risks causing a “pressure differential” that could damage the riverbed and surrounding landscape.
“A boring process is a good process,” Forbes added.
The pumps will deliver 300 cubic metres of water an hour everyday, 24/7, until the water reaches a depth of about two to three metres.
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After that, Forbes said, the river valley needs to stabilize, with workers monitoring how the water is coexisting with its surroundings, before opening it up to Lake Ontario later in the year by removing concrete plugs that currently separate the new Don River from the Polson Slip and the Keating Channel.
Pumps were turned on Jan. 31 to fill the new Don River valley from water through the Polson Slip. (Mahdis Habibinia / Toronto Star)
The area is more than 700 acres but only a small portion of the land, prior to this project, could be redeveloped because it was vulnerable to flooding. The plan has been to reroute the Don, clean polluted soil, create new parks and flood-proof the area to unlock a swath of land, including the old Unilever plant site, for redevelopment.
In total, the Flood Protection Project has excavated 1.5 million cubic metres of soil, which Forbes said is enough to fill the Rogers Centre. Most of it was decontaminated and reused, while a small portion was sent to landfill.
Forbes estimates about 2,000 people were involved in the overall Port Lands project through the years, from demolition teams to earthworks and park finishes and more.
Workers enjoyed the fruits of their labour for another half-hour on Wednesday morning, even after a project manager tapped on his wrist gesturing everybody to get back to work.
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“You can’t wipe this smile off my face,” said Ashley Christensen, an EllisDon assistant project manager for the river finishes team. “We aren’t surprised we’re here. We put in long days and nights.”
Standing on the river valley levee, boots sunk in sticky mud under overcast skies, Forbes shakes Christensen’s hand — both beaming with smiles that say “finally.”
Once the river valley is filled, stabilized and open to the public, it will be the only body of water in the downtown core that Torontonians can walk up to and dip their feet in.
The project is designed to protect the Port Lands from flooding, make the area a usable and accessible extension of downtown Toronto and harvest green space out of the flood protection infrastructure.
“We installed over two million herbaceous plants, about 77,000 shrubs and 5,000 trees to naturalize the river channel and create a lot of important ecological habitat,” said Shannon Baker, Waterfront Toronto’s project director of parks and public realm.
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The valley will be surrounded by three parks all slated to open in 2025. Baker said the city will conduct a formal naming process down the line.
The New Cherry Street and the revamped Commissioners Street, with its bridges, opened last week to the public, providing access to Villiers Island.
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