ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — It seems no one wants to lay claim to Southside Road, the aptly named waterfront street on the south side of St. John’s harbour, ending at the base of Fort Amherst.
The St. John’s Port Authority (SJPA) says the city is the rightful owner, but the city says it’s federally owned property.
Plus, it stinks.
Raw sewage from Fort Amherst homes is running directly into the ocean.
Back in September, Mayor Danny Breen called the situation “a problem.”
A project to bring sewage from Fort Amherst to the Riverhead Wastewater Treatment Plant received cost-shared federal, provincial and municipal funding in 2016, but the port authority and the city can’t come to an agreement about who owns the road under which the sewer lines would run from homes to the treatment plant via Southside Road.
Breen said in September the sewage outfall needs to be closed and a pump station put in. He said all the design work is done for that, but the city is at loggerheads with the port authority.
“That’s the last piece of the whole primary wastewater process, and so that needs to come back up the Southside Road to Riverhead, but we’re in negotiations over the access to the land that we need to do that to meet the regulations, but we can’t get the land to do the project on even though we have the funding, and the plan is designed to do it.”
Breen said it’s about assuming responsibility for some of the current environmental issues with the land.
“It’s a legal issue that we’re trying to work out, but we haven’t yet been able to work it out.”
On Friday, the St. John’s Port Authority sent a letter to the city detailing a proposed solution. Coun. Wally Collins mentioned the letter at the Tuesday council meeting, but Breen would not comment on it at that time.
History of road ownership
In contrast, SJPA president and CEO Sean Hanrahan has a lot to say.
In his letter to the city, shared with The Telegram by Hanrahan, he wrote: “The City of St. John's has had the equitable ownership of the Southside Road since the 1960s. However, in 1998, upon the establishment of the Canada Port Authority system, the federal government, by seeming mistake/inadvertence, included this road as part of the property to be managed by the St. John's Port Authority (SJPA).
“The SJPA, from 2008-2010 — and in earnest from 2017 to the present — has sought to have this error rectified; to have the title of the road vest in its equitable owner, the City, which has controlled and maintained it for over 55 years. The City expressed its interest in accepting title to the roadway in 2010 but reversed course in 2017.
“Having not received any written communication from the City on this matter since early October 2019, the SJPA felt it timely to propose a solution prior to the tendering season so that the City's Southside Road sewer line expansion project may proceed this year.”
Hanrahan’s letter goes on to detail a chronology of the title to the street, beginning with council minutes from 1965 that say it was decided the city would take over Southside Road from the federal government.
“Accordingly, since the mid-1960s, the City has appropriately recognized Southside Road as a city street: it has received over 55 years of tax revenue from property owners; it performs snowclearing; and it repairs and maintains the street, as it does with all City streets,” Hanrahan wrote.
He goes on to explain how the federal government put the land under administration of the SJPA in 1998, and the city wrote to the federal government in 2010 to obtain title to the land. The next six years, according to Hanrahan’s letter, were spent conducting property surveys and other work “in the rectification of this longstanding error.”
But in 2017, the city manager told the SJPA that the city was reversing its decision to take title to the road based on potential environmental concerns, according to the letter. It goes on to say that the city conducted an environmental site assessment via Englobe Corp. in September 2019 to reduce uncertainty about potential environmental concerns.
Hanrahan’s letter asserts that since 2017, 61 boreholes, test pits or subsurface investigations have been completed along areas of Southside Road for the sewer line project.
However, Hanrahan said this marks the fourth consecutive year that they’re left with insufficient time to complete a legal title transfer before the tendering season begins.
Solution suggested
Hanrahan's solution is that the city proceed with the project anyway with a memorandum of agreement in place saying the city will commit to ultimately accepting the title to the road, and providing an indemnity in favour of the SJPA for the duration of the construction.
“This documentation would simply formalize that which has been the case in practicality for more than 55 years; would allow an important project to move forward; and would eliminate any uncertainty which may arise in the future regarding continued usage of this public roadway,” Hanrahan wrote.
“I know that on the environmental piece there was a lot of testing done, and the testing has come back as acceptable as one could get for that type of a roadway,” Hanrahan told The Telegram.
“So, I don’t foresee any roadblocks to the proposed solution that we’re putting forward. The ball now is certainly in the city’s court, and I understand that they might need time to deal with the documents that I put forward. But it’s a good solution. It allows the project to go ahead, and it also allows the transition of the title to be delayed until after the project goes ahead.”
He said the project shouldn’t be held up for title reasons.
“It should be done this summer so the city and the residents don’t lose the benefit of that cost-sharing agreement, they can go ahead and do the project under a licence with us, and then afterwards we will work together to do the title transfer.”
An emailed statement from a city spokesperson says discussions with the port authority are ongoing, and there are no timelines in place for the installation of the pump station because it is dependent on both those discussions and the federal and provincial cost-sharing.
“The City remains committed to working with the Port on this long-standing issue. The City’s objective is to ensure that risks are mitigated for the transfer of federally owned property,” the spokesperson wrote.
Twitter: @juanitamercer_
