The Town of LaSalle's providing fun and function for a neighbourhood hit hard in several flooding events.
Heritage Estates sits just south of Hwy. 3 near Sandwich Pkwy, and it took on a lot of water when a massive rainstorm swept through Windsor-Essex in the summer of 2017. Peter Marra is the town's Director of Public Works, he says both the province and the federal government came through with some cash to make sure it didn't happen again.
A graphic showing the areas being worked on as part of the Heritage Park and Oliver Farms Stormwater Improvements in LaSalle. (Photo courtesy of www.lasalle.ca)
"Underground storage chambers will be installed within the park and there's also going to be a section of the park that's going to be lowered by about 1m to provide that storage during extreme events to try to control where the water goes instead of into their basements," he says. "We'll create the spot within the park. The park will have water in it for a period of time but it will eventually dry out and return to use the next day."
Several residents stopped in to the Vollmer Culture and Recreation Complex Thursday night to take a look at plans that he says have yet to receive negative feedback.
"Without the grant it probably would have been a number of years before something could have happened. Certainly, they're happy to see that the work is going to occur in 2019 and they're certainly happy to see that they're getting some additional features in the park as well," says Marra.
The town is still waiting to see if it will receive additional grants to complete stormwater improvements for the Oliver Farms area east of Montgomery Dr.
Marra says work should be completed on the Heritage Estates' phase by early 2020.