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Canada’s Longest Pedestrian Suspension Bridge Opening in Souris

PRWEB.COM Newswire

Souris, MB (PRWEB) August 17, 2013

The Town of Souris, MB. is once again the home to Canada’s longest pedestrian suspension bridge.

The 184-metre Souris Swinging Bridge is opening to the public Saturday, Aug. 17 at noon.

“We’re excited to see the Swinging Bridge re-open, but please keep in mind there may be times when one end of the bridge or the other will not be accessible until the landscaping is complete,” says Souris Mayor Darryl Jackson. “The official opening will take place at a later date so watch for updates on the Souris website http://www.sourismanitoba.com and Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/townofsouris. ”

After the previous bridge fell victim to flood waters in 2011, The Town of Souris partnered with Stantec to develop options to replace the iconic swinging bridge.

Stantec began with engineering analysis of the Souris River and its banks. Then they looked to similar pedestrian bridges in Canada and around the world for inspiration and ideas, generating a number of replacement options. Due to the historic and iconic nature of the Swinging Bridge, the Town decided early on that a suspension bridge, similar to the one destroyed in the flood, was the most desirable of the replacement options.

Stantec designed the bridge to not only be high enough for annual flood waters recorded to date to not reach the superstructure, but also to put Souris back on the map with Canada’s longest suspension pedestrian bridge.

“This has been such a gratifying project for our team,” says Stantec’s project manager Kevin Amy. “It’s been an exciting design challenge, but more importantly we know how much this bridge means to the community of Souris, and we’re proud to have played a role in giving this iconic structure back to them.”

The swinging bridges that have spanned this site have all been Souris’ principal attraction. The first of three bridges were built in 1904 by the late Squire Sowden as a means of transportation across the river. Replaced twice previously, in 1961 and 1976, the historic bridge once again was destroyed during the spring 2011 flooding in Manitoba. Because the rising Souris River was submerging the bridge, the Town of Souris sacrificed it in 2011 to alleviate the load the water was putting on the anchors located in the earth dyke.

Stantec Winnipeg office led the project, with structural engineering support from their Calgary office. Hilderman Thomas Frank Cram of Winnipeg is providing assistance with the site work.

About Souris

Souris is a vibrant beautiful community nestled at the junction of Plum Creek and the Souris River. It is surrounded on all sides by the productive farmland of the Rural Municipality of Glenwood. Souris is a service centre for this farming population as well as its own townspeople. The town is noted as being a Communities in Bloom National winner, a great sports town with recreational facilities to rival any community’s in Manitoba and a wonderful safe place to raise a family.

About Stantec

Stantec provides professional consulting services in planning, engineering, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, surveying, environmental sciences, project management, and project economics for infrastructure and facilities projects. We support public and private sector clients in a diverse range of markets at every stage, from the initial conceptualization and financial feasibility study to project completion and beyond. Our services are provided on projects around the world through approximately 13,000 employees operating out of more than 200 locations in North America and 4 locations internationally.

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/8/prweb11036446.htm

Bracebridge Examiner

MUSKOKA LAKES – About 20 people gathered with members of Muskoka Lakes council to listen to Mayor Alice Murphy give a state of the union for the township this morning (Aug. 17). The annual town hall meeting was held at Windermere Community Centre.

“This is a much smaller crowd than last year so that either means everyone’s happy or they don’t want to go to Windermere or it’s just the one sunny weekend of the year or there are competing events or maybe all of the above,” said Murphy.

This year, Murphy gave an overview of council’s progress over the past year, including a new exotic animal bylaw, a reduction in Ontario Municipal Board costs for the municipality and a soon-to-be dark sky bylaw, though it won’t be retroactive. Sunday gun hunting is now on the council table and as they have yet to have anyone “pushing back,” if there are any concerns, she suggested people come forward.

Council intends through site plan control to leave a legacy of responsible planning, said Murphy, when it comes to Hanna’s Landing, a development going ahead after an OMB appeal, which will effectively double the size of Port Carling from a zoning perspective. However, attainable housing is an area of need in the township, she admitted, but hopes changes at the district level will make it more possible in the township’s rural setting.

People are really on the same page that we need to at all times protect our environment and find niche opportunities of leveraging this fantastic landscape into making our economy work – Muskoka Lakes mayor Alice Murphy

Mayor Murphy admitted the township’s website is “crumby,” but added they are working on it and also plans to improve communication with the public by supplying print copies of their Council Connection newsletter at township drop-off locations, such as libraries, post offices and general stores.

As well as an overview of the past year, the town hall gathering gives residents an opportunity to raise any concerns they may have.

Concerns were raised about the appearance and lighting of the Tim Hortons to be constructed in Port Carling, as well as the traffic light that will be necessary to accommodate it at the bottom of the hill (Hwy. 118/Medora Street and Bruce Wilson Road).

The growing sport of cycling led some to comment on the narrow roads that would benefit from paved shoulders and a suggestion for biking stations at strategic spots around the lake to provide rest stops and a vantage point for tourists.

There was concern over the complaint-driven bylaw enforcement and whether penalties were severe enough. One woman questioned whether applicants that come before council actually comply with landscaping and dark sky lighting requirements of their site plan and whether anyone ever checks.

However, Murphy said the planning department had a lull in work last year and took a visit to properties with site plan conditions and found 95 per cent compliance.

The township’s new bylaw enforcement officer has had mixed reviews.

“Last year when we were in Port Carling we heard loud and clear that we have bylaws and we want them enforced,” said Murphy. “So this year we are enforcing bylaws and we’re finding some of the bylaws need some tweaking … some of them really have unexpected consequences; for example, the sign bylaw has caused some folks some aggravation.”

The sign bylaw will come up for discussion at council next month.

Overall, Mayor Murphy felt the town hall was a success and enjoyed hearing ideas from her constituents to improve the local economy.

“People are really on the same page that we need to at all times protect our environment and find niche opportunities of leveraging this fantastic landscape into making our economy work,” she said. “And the more times that we sit and have these kinds of collaborative discussions, ideas feed off of ideas.”

For anyone who has further ideas on how to grow the economy collectively, Muskoka Lakes township is holding two upcoming economic development workshops scheduled for Aug. 27 in Port Carling and Aug. 28 in Bala, 6:30 to 8 p.m., to discuss ideas for the region. For more information, visit muskokalakes.ca.

In sweltering September 2011, Fresno could have used more trees. Temperatures climbed, winds died and lung-searing ozone spiked the season’s highest readings on three days.

Worse yet, all three peaks broke the one-hour federal ozone standard between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on weekdays when children were outside after school.

An extensive canopy of trees over streets, parking lots and driveways might have kept ozone-cooking heat down just enough to avert those dangerous peaks, say researchers. Plus, trees actually take pollutants out of the air.

It’s time to talk seriously about using trees and other city-cooling ideas, such as reflective or cool roofs, to end the San Joaquin Valley’s decades-long quest to achieve the federal one-hour ozone standard, say air-quality leaders.

These days, only a few parts per billion of ozone on a few days a year separate the Valley from the achievement.

“Ten years ago, it might not have made as much sense to everyone to pursue these strategies,” said Seyed Sadredin, executive director of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. “But we’ve passed many rules, made many advances, and we’re so close to compliance on the one-hour standard now.”

The one-hour threshold is 125 parts per billion, which the Valley had no prayer of achieving in the past. This 25,000-square-mile bowl allows dirty air to build up for days — it’s an incubator for one of the worst ozone problems in the nation.

With cleaner-running vehicles and ever-tightening regulations on everything from dairies to urban sprawl, ozone peaks have dropped from the 150s to the 130s over the last decade.

University of California at Davis research suggests that if Fresno aggressively pushed city cooling efforts, temperatures could drop as much as 4 degrees. Up to 7 parts per billion could be trimmed off ozone peaks.

The stakes are high in this fight. When the standard is achieved, it will eliminate a $29 million annual penalty, most of which is paid by Valley motorists in their vehicle registration fees.

But money isn’t the best reason to fight ozone, health researchers say. Ozone is a corrosive gas that damages lungs, eyes and skin. It is linked to heart and lung ailments as well as early mortality.

The Valley’s climate creates ideal conditions for ozone, which forms best in heat, sunlight and stagnant air. Scientists say turning down the heat just a little is a logical approach to shave off the peaks on bad days.

It’s a fight against the phenomenon called the urban heat island. Cities become heat islands as they trap energy from the sun in asphalt, rooftops and buildings, particularly in places as sunny and warm as Fresno or other Valley cities.

Drive from downtown Fresno into the surrounding farmland on most any summer day. Feel the temperature drop several degrees. Streets and parking lots of this 112-square-mile city hold the heat long after dark.

“Think of it as a heat dome over the city,” said meteorologist Paul Iniguez of the National Weather Service in Hanford. “It’s not a perfect dome, because there are green spaces in cities, such as parks. But it has the characteristics of a dome.”

As the climate warms over the next century, scientists expect heat islands to become more intense and more of a factor in ozone problems. The cost of cooling homes and businesses will no doubt rise, scientists say.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has a heat island research team that has worked on several cooling approaches, including vegetation, reflective materials for roofs and pavement.

In roofing, for instance, materials might include titanium dioxide to reflect infrared light. Though human eyes don’t perceive such light, it contains about half the energy in the sunlight that hits Earth.

Experiments have shown dramatic differences with the reflective material. In a side-by-side comparison of a reflective parking lot and a more standard blacktop parking lot, scientists recorded a 30-degree difference on a June day in Berkeley.

“The darker materials absorb more heat,” said Benjamin Mandel, graduate research assistant at Berkeley Lab.

In Fresno, Berkeley researchers studied the difference between a light-colored concrete-tile roof and a dark asphalt-shingle roof during the five hottest months last year. The light-colored, more reflective roof saved a total of $350 over the five months.

Mandel said that if all Fresno homes had the reflective roof, the savings would be about $60 million each year.

But such a radical change in a city of half a million might be a lot to expect, he said. A more realistic scenario would be modest improvements over a smaller percentage of the city amounting to a few million dollars of savings — still a worthy investment, he said.

California is pushing toward more energy- and water-efficient construction, but the new state building code, called CALGreen, has only voluntary measures for cool or reflective roofs for new homes or roof replacements on older homes.

The California Energy Code requires such roofs for new commercial buildings.

The city of Fresno does not mandate cool roofs, but officials are reviewing the development code, which includes a provision about trees in the landscaping of buildings and homes.

Since 1993, Fresno has required a tree for every two parking spaces in lots around the city, said Arnoldo Rodriguez, interim city planning manager.

“We’re looking to reduce the number of parking spaces and the size of parking lots in the future,” he said. “We’re also exploring the idea of reducing the width of new streets with hopes of getting less paved area in the city.”

Fresno needs to turn greener with trees, says Lee Ayers, executive director of Tree Fresno. His organization is pushing to make trees a priority in the city.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that we all would benefit from more trees,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of planting new trees. We need to replace trees that have died and retain mature trees in this city.”

Research links

• Heat islands: Read more about heat island research by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

• Local issues: Read the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District’s report on heat islands.

• Tree guide: Read “Tree Guidelines for San Joaquin Valley Communities.”

The reporter can be reached at (559) 441-6316, email to: mgrossi@fresnobee.com’mgrossi@fresnobee.com or @markgrossi on Twitter.