Pulling the Plug: How we’ll reconnect the Don River to the Lake
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- Опубликовано: 18 окт 2024
- In February 2024, we flooded the new river that we built in the Port Lands. Over the summer, we removed the ‘west plug’, which separated the new part of the river from the Lake. Now, we’re starting to remove the North Plug, which will allow the existing Don River to flow through the new river valley. This work will take a little while, and a lot of it will happen underwater. Don Forbes is here to explain how it’s done.
I'm envious of Don and his crew, getting to engage in such a massive project that will have a lasting impact and benefit for untold millions in the future. Talk about leaving your mark in the world!
Don's Don Crew?
Don workin' on the Don!
This is super exciting to see an industrial wasteland turned to parkland. Chapeau!
Best publicworks project in Toronto hands down
Brilliant. Well explained!
It's going to be a fantastic new environment for fish, plants, and hopefully amphibians and turtles. The new fish breeding areas will eventually help anglers as well. Love it and Gratz to those who worked on the project.
It must feel wonderful completing such a valuable project.❤
Gratz ?
Torontonians can be proud of this.
Imagine being one of the divers who can say they cut the beams that connected the river to the lake.
Incredible project for the entire country!
How do they clean up all the concrete rubble from the busted up wall that will be on the riverbed?
Bigger chunks are removed by an excavator. The smaller rubble pieces remain behind on the river bed. We’ll do a bathymetric survey to ensure that as much debris as necessary is removed.
Add them to Tommy Thompson park!
The old turning basin was way too small!
And what was the total cost of the project?
The total project will cost $1.35B. This includes a kilometer-long extension of the Don River, new roads, utilities, bridges, wetlands and parks. You can learn more about what we’re building here: portlandsto.ca/project-details/
Why is the river north of the plug a different colour from the new river? Is that a difference in water quality, or something else?
The water north of the north plug has more sediment, so it's darker.
Hi there, In this video, the shot you see around 2:03 is from before we started removing the North Plug. The water in the new river valley was only lake water at that point. Lake water tends to be clearer than river water because it has less sediment in it. The water in the existing Don River/Keating Channel is a highly urban water channel, which results in lots of sediment. Sediment is also more common in river water because it stays suspended more easily in moving water. When it reaches the lake, the water moves more slowly and the sediment sinks to the bottom.
Because the water in the Don River is mostly sewage overflow and industrial waste.
They would have had to dig up lots of things at the mouth of the Don during all this work. Any cars? Bodies? C'mon, let us in on this.
Finally, the old right hand 90° turn was far too industrial.
Will here be some sort of filtration system for the Don water, before it flows into the lake?
The Don River has always flowed into Lake Ontario. For the past century or so, it has flowed via the Keating Channel. We’re building a renaturalized river channel for it to flow through in addition to the Keating Channel. This work also includes a sediment and debris management area, where we will capture some of the debris that flows down the river and allow for some of the sediment to drop out of the river before entering the new river channel, but it does not include a filtration system.
I'm sure that a cost benefit analysis was done to justify the $1.35 billion tag (to listen to politicians how strapped the coffers are, who knew Toronto could raise such capital...) but for the taxpayers of Toronto, let's say those in Agincourt or Long Branch or Willowdale, what exactly is the benefit in layman's terms of this expenditure?
Hurry up with this. Everything here takes decades.
Let's get accurate. Connecting the " Don to the Lake" is a misnomer. All that is happening here is that it is being diverted from the Keating Channel to the Shipping Channel and the Polson Slip. The river will still dump its detritus into Toronto Inner harbour.
To connect the Don to the lake its route would have to be connected to the Outer Harbour. Certainly there will never again be a 'river delta' that was filled in a hundred years ago to create all of the industrial lands that are still there along Commissioners and Unwin Ave.
🙄
A beautiful new bridge with only one lane each way. Yep, The West Plug for sure. 🤦♂️
The Don river smells like a sewer.
Wow how disappointing. I’m Canadian and can see fellow Canadians struggling with low cost housing . That is a ridiculous way to spend taxpayer dollars when people are struggling, the government should be ashamed of itself. Boo
...extravagant capital project that has little benefit for taxpayers, was all done on borrowed money: finding new ways to spend money we could not afford, for the so called "greater good of humanity!" tale.
They forgot to mention how this should manage flooding in the future.
Meanwhile the ten year billions over budget Eglinton Crosstown LRT coasts back and forth, and hasn’t carried a SINGLE Paying Passenger. And won’t ever this year! Oh, Look! Goldfish!