The area of the subject watersheds exhibits very little topographic relief. The surface soils are generally fair draining, and predominantly consist of sand and gravel over deep deposits of impervious clayey silts. As indicated in Drawing No. 1 of 11, the Broadway Drain watershed is bounded by the Essex Terminal Railway (ETR) to the east, the Black Oak Nature Reserve to the south, the Detroit River to the west, and the Healy Drain watershed boundary to the north. The preconstruction drainage boundary between the Broadway and Healy Drains was assumed to occur mid-block between Healy Street and Broadway Boulevard. The Healy Drain watershed was bounded by the ETR to the east, Ojibway Parkway to the north, the Detroit River to the west, and the Broadway Drain watershed to the south.

2.2 Drain History

The City has long regarded both the Broadway Drain and the Healy Drain as municipal drains established under the Drainage Act. Aerial mapping maintained by the Essex Region Conservation Authority also identifies these drainage features as municipal drains. Nevertheless, a search of the City’s archives did not produce any historic reports or bylaws to confirm the status of either drain. There were also no records found to indicate how much (if any) maintenance had occurred along the subject drains since they were originally established, nor the previously defined limits of the respective watersheds.

Stantec Consulting was retained by Transport Canada in 2014 to prepare site servicing designs for the Perimeter Access Road (PAR) around the Canadian plaza of the GHIB. It was recognized early in the design process that construction of the plaza and the PAR would significantly impact the Broadway Drain and the Healy Drain - both physically (in terms of their channel alignments), and also in terms of their drainage areas, watershed boundaries, runoff volumes, and peak flow rates.

Given the above, it was concluded that a new Engineer’s Report would be necessary to properly address and accommodate the aforementioned drainage issues, and to ensure that appropriate outlet for all of the public and private lands within the affected watersheds was maintained - both initially following construction of the plaza and PAR, and into the future.

Therefore, in order to protect the drainage rights of the drainage community at-large, the City required that Transport Canada petition for the repair and improvement of the Broadway Drain and the Healy Drain under the provisions of the Drainage Act. The petitions submitted by Transport Canada, as well as a copy of the Council resolution appointing Landmark Engineers are attached here as Appendix A.

2.3 Construction Under the Bridge To Strengthen Trade Act

At the outset of this undertaking, it was intended that the preparation of the Engineer's Report would precede any repair, improvement or alteration of the existing drains - as is the usual case with undertakings under Section 78 of the Drainage Act. Following our initial assessment of the drains and while in the process of designing the drain improvements, however, Transport Canada determined that in order to maintain their construction schedule, they needed to