AMHERST - It's probably going to be 2010 at the earliest before the failed aboiteau on the marsh near Amherst is replaced.
Andy Cameron, who manages the marshlands division for the Department of Agriculture, said Tuesday the project is waiting for capital funding from the province.
"We still have a request in for capital funding," Cameron said. "The intention is still to replace it, but it's not looking like it's going to happen this year."
In the meantime, he added, the existing aboiteau, built in 1957, is still holding.
"To date there's no indication it's failing," Cameron said. "We're looking to replace it because it has been on the books for a long time."
The aboiteau functions to prevent the flooding of marshlands around the town. In use since the time of the Acadians, aboiteaus on the marsh keep rich, fertile marshlands from flooding.
Once the funding is in place, an engineering study of the aboiteau will be completed externally followed by construction of the new one.
It's unknown how much it will cost to replace the aboiteau, but Cameron said more than $250,000 was spent on the one that failed.
The decision to replace the aboiteau goes back to the 1980s and was acted upon in 2007 to reduce some of the strain on the old aboiteau. However, after the department put a new aboiteau in place, the steel casing put in the ground as part of the new sluicegate and aboiteau shifted during the winter or spring of 2008 causing it to fail.
dcole@amherstdaily.com
