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By Bob Armstrong
The Winnipeg Free Press, South Community Review
Wednesday, June 12, 2003
A one-time garbage dump along the Seine River will be coming
back to life, thanks to a "community greening" event, in which
volunteers planted 400 trees and bushes and cleaned up trash.
Volunteers from Save Our Seine, College Jeanne Sauvé, the Sea
Cadets and the Marlene Street Tenants' Association joined Urban
Green Team members for a day-long clean-up and tree-planting on
June 1.
The project is intended to beautify one of the most heavily-abused
stretches of the Seine. The St. Vital municipal dump was once
located beside the river near Marlene Street, says Jules Legal
of Save Our Seine, which was founded in 1990 to beautify one of
the city's smallest and most neglected waterways (saveourseine@yahoo.ca).
The old dump site needs a great deal of TLC to bring it back
to a natural state; after the landfill closed, the four-to-five
acre site was used a snow dump, and the sand, gravel and salt
from the city streets made it difficult for vegetation to reclaim
the site.
"We planted about 400 trees and bushes," said Legal. "But this
was a more elaborate greening than some that we've done because
of the condition of the site. We're crossing our fingers and hoping
they will survive."
In order to give the trees a fighting chance in the inhospitable
environment, the volunteers added topsoil and biodegradable fabric
blankets to protect them and help them grow.
Cheryl Heming, the City of Winnipeg's naturalist, helped the
groups select trees and bushes that would grow well and create
an attractive forest. The greening volunteers planted Manitoba
maple, green ash, chokecherry and hawthorne, while Green Team
members hauled trash away from the site.
An attractive forest would be a major improvement for the vacant
lot, say area residents. "That old landfill isn't being used for
anything," says Wendy Normand of the Marlene Street Tenant's association
(msta@canada.com). The Marlene Street residents envision a park
with a walking trail, as well as a skating rink and basketball
court. "There's a seniors complex right here and they're looking
for a nice place to walk," says Normand. Residents also hoped
to establish a community garden, but because of the land's former
use as a landfill, it's not suitable, she adds.
Working to beautify the river is only one of the projects the
Marlene Street residents have taken on. The association, formed
five years ago, holds classes and a mom and tots group, plus a
Community Connections computer lab-one of many free government
funded computer labs that allow people to access the internet
or use computers for other purposes.
An annual summer picnic in August, with pony rides, kids' games
and a silent auction, is also designed to get residents of the
apartment complexes to come out and meet one another, says Norman.
The Marlene Street residents and SOS came together for the greening
because the riverbank is in territory that both groups would like
to see cleaned up. SOS has held about a dozen greenings along
the river, most of them further to the north towards St. Boniface.
The groups next big project is to install riffles-artificial
rapids-at a number of locations along the Seine River. Riffles
are carefully designed to raise the water level on the upstream
side and to aerate the water as it passes through the rapids.
The group has identified a series of sites for riffles from the
Red River to the Perimeter Highway. One of them is located below
the former Marlene Street landfill site.
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