PUGWASH – A $200,000 project to fix the waterfront in Pugwash is drawing rave reviews from those using the improved boardwalk.
“The response has been tremendous,” Pugwash village commission chair Rod Benjamin said. “There are all sorts of people on the boardwalk every day. It has been quite popular.
“It’s such a positive step for the village and for the commission because it shows what a small village commission can do if it sets its mind to doing things.”
The work was needed after two storms in fall 2008 severely damaged the waterfront and washed away a large portion of the walkway causing it to be closed. The village commission looked into repairing the waterfront for the fourth time in five years, but found it would cost more than $20,000 with no guarantees it wouldn’t be damaged again in the following years.
Commissioner Dave Farley said commission officials contacted federal and provincial officials as well as those with the Municipality of Cumberland to see if anything could be done on a permanent solution.
“The decision was made that we needed to do more than a Band-Aid fix on this, we needed something permanent, so the work was started on acquiring the funding we needed,” said Farley. “We called everyone we could think of about what funding could be made available.”
The end result was $131,000 in funding from the federal government and the province, $50,000 from Cumberland County and $19,000 from the village to complete the project.
An engineer was hired last fall and the project began to take shape. Tenders were called last December and the contract was awarded to Fundy Landscaping of Amherst in February.
The project included raising the seawall by three feet, replacing the gravel pathway with a wooden boardwalk, regarding the lawn and replacing the walkway lighting. At the same time, a video recording system was put in place to curb vandalism along the boardwalk.
The commission plans to work with the group that operates the Eaton estate in hopes of extending the boardwalk around that property.
