New city salt building ready for winter

Image of Nick Seebruch
By Nick Seebruch
New city salt building ready for winter
Mayor Bernadette Clement cuts the ribbon for the new salt facility at the City of Cornwall Municipal Works Yard as Michael Bray of Louis W. Bray Construction Inc., Councillor Claude McIntosh, Councillor Elaine MacDonald, Councillor Syd Gardiner, General Manager for Infrastructure and Municipal Works Bill de Witt, and City of Cornwall CAO Maureen Adams look on on Friday, October 23, 2020 (Nick Seebruch/ Seaway News).

CORNWALL, Ontario – The City of Cornwall celebrated their newly completed salt storage facility at the Municipal Works Yard on Friday, Oct. 23.

The $4.5 million facility can hold 7,000 tonnes of salt, more than 10 times the amount of the old building.

Bill de Wit, the City of Cornwall’s General Manager for Infrastructure and Municipal Works explained that a 2016 study determined that all of the buildings in the Municipal Works Yard were in need of replacing, and the completion of the new salt storage building marks the end of the first phase of the yard’s remodeling.

Design of the new building was handled by WSP, with Moray Associates handling the geological engineering and Louis W. Bray Construction Inc. handling the construction of the facility itself.

“It is nice in these COVID times to talk about something that moves us forward,” Cornwall Mayor Bernadette Clement said of the new building, referring to the global COVID-19 pandemic. “This construction sends the message home that this will be a new campus for Municipal Works.”

Mayor Clement explained that 7,000 tonnes of road salt would get the city through a normal winter.

“I wish you all as normal a winter as possible,” Mayor Clement said. “We will be able to react to whatever winter throws at us, and Cornwall is always ready for anything the world throws at us,” Clement added.

The building was nearly $2 million over budget, with de Wit explaining that the increased cost came down to geology. de Wit told reporters that the ground that the building sits on has unstable clay beneath the surface, which required the excavation of 25,000 metric tonnes of soil which was replaced 52,000 tonnes of granular.

“Yes it is a lot of money, but as far as I’m concerned it will last forever,” de Wit said of the building.

The new salt facility will allow trucks to load up with 20 tonnes of salt in less than 10 minutes.

Next steps will be the construction of a new administration building and a new multi-use building.

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