Taverner St, Bacchus Marsh, is to get “improvement” works which mostly seem to amount to adding gutters and formal parking spots in place of the vague swale drains that currently sit next to it. I am unimpressed. Swale drains allow water infiltration of the soil, recharging the water table and keeping the floodplain healthy. But who cares about the floodplain; current priorities seem to involve covering it in asphalt and concrete.
A Canadian blogger wrote a fantastic piece of invective against the ever-expanding road budgets of towns. “Roads are basically the herpes of infrastructure investments: once a road is built, it stays with you forever… Because of the long lifespan of roads, mistakes we’ve made 20, 30, even 40 years ago haven’t had their full impact yet. That’s going to be felt in future operating budgets” writes Michel Durand-Wood.
Cunningly, or should I say, intelligently, Michel provides a counter-point: the past glory of his neglected neighbourhood park, Elmwood Park:
“…for nearly sixty years starting in the early 1900s, Elmwood Park was a shining gem. My next-door neighbour, who has lived here since childhood in the 1940s, remembers it being a common location for people taking wedding photos.
Continue reading“No doubt because, until the mid-1960s, the park had a full-time gardener who maintained it, and planted up to 1,200 flowers every spring. The park also had a lily pond and fountain, a lot more seating, and amenities such as barbeque pits.”
From Dear Winnipeg
as the river goes by 