Sinkhole near Moncton's Jones Lake trail slated for repair

City work crews in Moncton are preparing to repair a sinkholenear the control gates at Jones Lake.

Repairs were made to the area three years ago, as well as last year. The area in need of repair is beside a popular walking trail and is now behind barricades.

Water runs through the control gates of Jones Lake and culverts then carry it to Jonathan Creek, which empties into the Petitcodiac River.

"The culverts have been rotting out, corroding on the sides," said Jeff Scott, the city's general foreman. "The water comes in and out of the culverts and takes a bit of soil with it each time that happens, so over time we lose more and more soil and then it gets to a point where we have to do a repair again."

Scott says the earlier fixes have been temporary and the city would like to see a permanent solution. For that to happen, CN Rail needs to make some repairs of its own.

"CN has a large property where the tracks go over, there's a couple of large culverts that pass underneath that before it deposits the water into the Petitcodiac River," said Jones. "So that's really kind of the bottleneck of the whole system and they're going to be expanding the capacity of those culverts so then that will really alleviate a lot of the flooding that happens," he said.

"The key piece in the puzzle is some work that CN is going to be doing underneath their tracks and apparently the City of Moncton is finalizing an agreement with them so that should be able to go ahead in the near future.

Temporary repairs are scheduled to begin on June 2.

In order for the work to be carried out, the water level in the lake will be lowered.

Jones Lake is a city-owed recreation facility in the city's west end that is used by canoeists and kayakers and bordered by a walking trail.