Wellington’s Millennium Trail restoration fraught with failures and overspending

Administrator | Sep 10, 2026 | Comments 2

Above, the trail at the Consecon Street end on Sept. 10. The intersection of Consecon Street and the Millennium Trail in Wellington is to be closed to all traffic Monday, Sept. 21 at 7 a.m. until Wednesday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m. and Monday, Oct. 5 at 7 a.m. until Tuesday, Oct. 6 at 7 p.m. The closure in September is required so that the County’s contractor can install the watermain (an underground water pipe) and force main (a pressurized sewer pipe) across Consecon Street. During the second closure in October, crews will work to make the final water service connections. – Sue Capon photo

By Sharon Harrison
The poor condition of a portion of the Millennium Trail in Wellington was again highlighted for council specifically as it pertains to the on-going construction of the section associated with the Wellington water and wastewater trunkline project.

But the on-going restoration issues extend far beyond, with Wellington Community Association steering committee member Joanna Green telling council Tuesday night it as a “disastrously mismanaged” project.

She outlined a slew of failures the waterworks project has faced including disruption to residents for well over a year as the project was expected to be finished in June 2025 and still has not been fully completed; and how it is currently behind schedule and massively over budget.

Construction began in fall 2024, she noted and “Residents are still enduring the disruption of on-going hammering and blasting right in their backyards.”

The original agreement indicated the trail would be restored to its original condition following construction, something that has yet to happen.

To understand the full scope of the issues, she listed a few of the specific and on-going failures, such as the disruption to residential streets (for 14 months, and on-going), the omitted pumping station, contractor friction and legal risk, and unplanned for contaminated soil/lack of municipal oversight (2-3 feet soil removal costing $1 million).

Also, environmental contamination (silt in Lane Creek requiring Ministry of Environment involvement), neglected restoration efforts (newly-planted trees not being properly cared for), winter flooding (Wharf Street), absence of municipal oversight, poor communication/lack of answers, and cost overruns/financial accountability, among them.

On top of that, she highlighted how the project, which began at an estimated $12 million in 2021, now sits at $31.1 million, and could rise further – indicating a more than $19 million spend increase over the last five years.

Green’s ask was to for council to commission an internal, or preferably an independent third-party, review of the Millennium Trail water and wastewater pipeline construction project, in order to prevent future similar occurrences, and to restore public trust.

However, CAO Adam Goheen indicated it wasn’t their intention to undertake an external review or a formal review, and any internal review would not be made public.

Gregor Stuart, PEC Trails Committee chair, expressed frustration and disappointment at how the trail has been treated by the contractor, and how the municipality’s word to hold the contractor responsible for restoring the trail has not been honoured.

He noted that even before the contract was signed and the construction started, he said they were told the trail would be restored to its original state, a requirement he said was stated in the original tender.

He also noted how Goheen had indicated that restoration of the trail would be completed in spring 2026, and he noted that council minutes state that no financial impacts were anticipated.

“And yet, here we are,” expressed Stuart.

“The contractor has left a metre-high pile of contaminated soil on the trail, creating an impediment to all that will use it forever. More than that, the contaminants will leach into people’s yards where their children play, where they plant their vegetable gardens, and also into Lane Creek and then downstream into Lake Ontario.”

He said all County taxpayers should be mad “at a project that is almost double its original estimate and still not completed to the promised scope”.

“If proper project management had been done from the start, I wouldn’t be here asking for you to do the right thing or move the excess contaminated soil,” shared Stuart. “The contractor would have been held to the terms of the contract, proper budgeting would have been in place, and contingency funds would have been managed for the unexpected items.”

Stuart spoke to a breach of trust between the parties and poor communication, where he said they have been continually given incorrect information about the project, or no information.

“Ultimately, we want what we saw in the tender, and were told from the start, that is to return the trail to its pre-construction state.”

Councillor Janice Maynard said that, “it is unfortunate the expectations that were relayed to the group are not going to pan out”.

“It is what it is now, so either we spend more money on the trail…. it may not be the most perfect trail, but it’s probably the best part of the whole Millennium Trail,” said Maynard. “It’s a utility corridor that we have brought up to a pretty good standard, and regrettably it didn’t pan out exactly the way we wanted, but we often have to live with some of those.”

Goheen admitted the project’s trajectory “has not been the best”.

“We have already begun to look at this project in terms of how we pulled it off and some of the issues we had, and our focus at this very moment is getting the project done,” he said. “We do intend to take a closer look internally at what went wrong and could have changed. We had not planned on doing anything external or formal back to council.”

Wellington councillor Corey Engelsdorfer asked Green about a review.

“Given your concerns that you’ve raised about planning, oversight, costs, project management, do you believe that an independent review of the trunk line should be completed before council makes any further decisions on large-scale infrastructure projects?” he asked. Green answered: “absolutely”.

“A transparent and fulsome inquiry is essential for understanding why critical infrastructure was omitted from the initial tenders, how the budget and timeline were so severely exceeded, and what systemic failures led to the many unsatisfactory outcomes associated with this project.”

She said, the project has become a case study in poor planning, lack of oversight, systemic operational failure, project mismanagement and inadequate communication, and she is looking for answers. “There have been many costly errors, omissions, miscalculations and failures prior to, and during, the course of the construction work.”

“We are asking for direct accountability, an explanation as to how these compounding errors were allowed to happen, and the implementation of rigorous policies and procedures to ensure that County taxpayers are protected from such colossal systemic failures ever being repeated in the future,” Green outlined.

When it comes to the financials, Green explained how the project’s engineering estimate was $12 million (2021), when it went to tender, the figure had risen to $16.1 million (2023), along with an additional unplanned for $6.1 million tender for a newly deemed necessary sewage pumping station, which brough the tender total to $22.1 million (plus HST).

“In June, staff reported that the project cost has now ballooned to $31.1 million.”

Because of inadequate initial studies and poor consultant advice, the excavation site suffered continual flooding due to massive groundwater volumes, triggering lengthy delays, she said. “What specific oversight failures led to the omission of the pumping station and the severe groundwater flooding delays?”

The excess contaminated soil pulled from the pumping station site was either not anticipated or not properly planned for, leaving the community to deal with the unfortunate result of altered trail heights, she outlined.

“Initially, the trail between Wharf Street and Maple Street no longer resembled the accessible, natural community asset it was before this project began. Instead, in some places, where it was previously level with the neighbouring residential properties, it had become an unattractive, raised trail with hazardous drop offs on either side, towering over adjacent back yards, rendering it inaccessible and an eyesore for those neighbours who back onto it.”

It was explained by Green how there has been virtually no day-to-day municipal oversight on the project with contractors left to police themselves. “Instead of municipal staff catching errors and addressing them proactively, impacted residents were forced to act as unpaid site inspectors, reporting critical issues and concerns directly to their local councillor just to get a response”.

“If this municipality cannot successfully manage a two-kilometre water pipeline project without running into serious issues, such as environmental contamination, massive budget overruns, contractor walkouts and extreme disruption to residents, how on earth can council even consider moving forward with a 20-kilometre water pipeline to Picton?” expressed Green.