Tree removal in Harlow and Noble park area of Medicine Hat well underway

“We had to switch to open-cut installation, which of course results in significantly more disturbance to the park area.”

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Chapman said that the open-cut method to install the water pipes required tree removal, as they had to backslope trenches to make it safe for the workers, and needed more physical space to do the project.

The ability to access the pipes in the future and not have the tree roots potentially cause damage was also in consideration.

Chapman said that this lead to discussions with other departments, and a larger project came out of it with the irrigation needing replacement and other renewals.

“It kind of created an opportunity for parks to trigger full renewal of the parks,” he said.

“As well as doing gas distribution replacement of the infrastructure that currently exists in the park. So it’s kind of some synergies there,” he added.

“We can kind of group it in with other required renewal work, and it’ll be a lot of disturbance, but it’ll affect the area once, and hopefully we won’t have to enter there again anytime soon.”

Chapman said that they find by grouping the work together, it results in a lower overall cost for the project.

“Once we knew we were going to be causing disturbance, we engaged with our communications group to do a much more extensive community engagement,” he said.

“We did send out an initial mailing about the project earlier in 2024, just to make customers or surrounding residents aware of the project, but once we knew we were doing more significant disturbance to the park, we created an engagement plan with much more expansive communication, which included about 250 surrounding residents around the parks.”

A project website was also created on the cities website,

Chapman said that no one wanted to create this kind of disturbance to the park area.

“We never intended to do tree removals to this extent. It’s not what anyone wanted. It was just technically not feasible to be able to do the project without,” he said.

“I think at the end of the day, residents are going to be pretty happy with the renewed parks. I think it’s going to provide a better amenity for them in the future,” he added.

“They’ve also had plenty of input on what the plans are.”

Additional trees are to be replanted in areas that are not above the water mains.

The tree removal will be completed by March 1, but according to Chapman it could be much sooner.

The project will then go to tender, with work expected to start in May, and completion likely by the fall, according to Chapman.

Chapman said that the parks part of the project could potentially take longer.

by Jesse Gill

Tree removal in Harlow and Noble park area of Medicine Hat well underway

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