Mother Nature didn't help this spring.
The often-rainy first part of this year slowed the draining of Port Coquitlam's Blakeburn lagoons.
In March, pumps were positioned at the edge of the two ponds — located north of the Carnoustie Golf Club — to siphon the contaminated water into an eastern swail that flows into the Pitt River.
And, when the burst of dry weather finally arrived late last month, the water had all but gone, allowing construction crews with Western Watershed Designs Ltd. to start shaping the earth and adding some 250,000 native trees and plants to the 27-acre site.
When complete in November, the Blakeburn lagoons will have totally changed its status: from decommissioned waste settling ponds — closed off to the public for more than 40 years — to an ecologically restored oasis.
Looping 2.5 km, with a path at its centre, the new Blakeburn Lagoons Park will be an escape for nature lovers, runners and dog walkers alike as well as science students attending the nearby schools of Blakeburn and Cedar Drive elementaries, Terry Fox secondary and Archbishop Carney regional high school.
Lee-Anne Truong, the city's capital projects manager, said the $3-million brownfield restoration work — of which $1.9 million comes from senior governments — will see the pond mud scooped out and mixed with amendment to detoxify the soil (in the 1990s, tests found excessive fecal coliform, copper and mercury levels in the water).
In turn, that improved soil will be recycled to build islands for the birds.
There will be other amenities, too.
A reflection area in the middle path — not quite the healing space that activists had called for to honour the women murdered by serial killer Robert Pickton, whose property lies close by — as well as a viewing platform on the west pond, benches and five bat boxes of which two are being built by the Burke Mountain Naturalists (BMN).
Area resident and BMN Bat Team chairperson John Saremba said he and fellow environmentalist Kiyoshi Takahashi met with city officials several times this year about bat conservation and BMN education initiatives.
"Given the importance of bat species in our region, we had wanted to encourage such conservation efforts at the Blakeburn Lagoon Park as well as promote greater public awareness of the benefits and value of bats in our local community," Saremba told The Tri-City News, in an email. "City staff were very cooperative and quite interested in such a partnership as well as the volunteer services that we could provide."
Truong said public interest in the Blakeburn Lagoons Park project has been strong from the start, with hundreds of residents attending open houses and offering design input.
Initially, the city proposed two concepts: a People's Park, which included access to the water, or a Nature Park, which kept the area quiet for wildlife; the latter gained the most approval, she said.
The extensive remediation of Blakeburn Lagoons — which were operated by the Greater Vancouver Sewerage and Drainage District for sanitary sewer flows for homes and farms until the site was decommissioned in 1978 — has been on the city to-do list for years.
"People are really excited to see this finally done," Truong said. "It's been closed off for so long and soon it will be in our backyard."
• More details about the project can be found at portcoquitlam.ca/blakeburn or emailing Lee-Anne Truong, PoCo’s manager of capital projects, at [email protected].
