Your Countryside Park, your watershed

Thanks for your questions and sorry for the delay in responding.

We will design the ponds with safety as a priority and follow all current standards and guidelines. The ponds will be designed deep enough to prevent stagnant water odour and mosquito breeding habitat from forming. We will upgrade the path and move it around the pond but will maintain the same continuity that it currently has. We'll share more details once the pond design begins. Please subscribe to the Engage page to receive updates.

Thank you for your questions about the work, it appears that some of the trees will need to be removed.  Once the design is started we will get a better sense of the impacts once the background investigation is completed. Though trees may be removed, the ponds will be planted with more trees and vegetation which will enhance the park landscape once the vegetation is established.

The drawings provided on the Engage Page from the master plan are intended to present an idea of what is possible. The design will provide more context once it begins. The excavations for the ponds will be designed to be limited to City property. 

We haven't yet confirmed the exact location, size and design details of the two ponds for Countryside Park. The proposed locations are at the two entrances to the park. We will develop these details through the design process. We'll share design proposals with the public for review and comments at various stages. Subscribe to this Engage page to receive all updates.

Safety is a key factor in the way we design stormwater management ponds. We apply Provincial and Municipal safety standards. Some safety measures include signage, buffer zones, railings, and natural planting barriers.

As mentioned in a response below, we will upload an image of the conceptual layout of the ponds to Engage as soon as possible. In the meantime, please email me, the Project Manager at Chris.Nechacov@kitchener.ca, and I will send you the conceptual plan. Please note that the conceptual plan only serves as a basis for the preliminary design. Plans may change considerably throughout the design process.

We design stormwater ponds to avoid creating pools of shallow, stagnant water where mosquitoes like to breed. We add native plants within and around the pond perimeter to create a habitat for natural predators such as bats, birds and frogs. These native plants also support pollinator insects like butterflies and native bees.

Thanks for your questions. The pond project will not have a direct impact on lawn care services. But the whole community benefits when we care for local creeks and rivers.  

We are considering locating one pond near the Countryside Crescent entrance to the park. We may locate the second pond on the opposite side of the park along Rittenhouse Road. It is still too early to confirm locations.

If you visit Kitchener’s stormwater ponds, you don't find a lot of mosquitoes. We design stormwater ponds to avoid creating pools of shallow, stagnant water where mosquitoes like to breed. We add native plants within and around the pond perimeter to create a habitat for natural predators such as bats, birds and frogs. These native plants also support pollinator insects like butterflies and native bees.

Drilling will happen over the next few weeks at the park to assess the groundwater table and the soil conditions on site. The design of the ponds will take all of the existing condition information into consideration and will not negatively impact groundwater levels.

Thanks for reaching out with your questions. Please check out the stormwater management ponds at Waldau Woods Park and Forest West Park. These are good examples of the type of wet ponds that we will add to Countryside Park, though the ponds in Countryside Park are proposed to be smaller.   

We are considering locating one pond near the Countryside Crescent entrance to the park. We may locate the second pond on the opposite side of the park along Rittenhouse Road. It is still too early to confirm locations.

Thank you for letting us know the park is important to your daily routine. During construction, we will close part or all of the park for safety because of the use of heavy equipment. Later this year we will post a survey on the Engage page to help us understand how people use the park. One way we will use the survey results is to minimize impacts on the community during construction.

We encourage you to subscribe to the project Engage page. We will use Engage to post project updates including construction details when we are at that stage in a few years.

We are working on creating an accessible version of the 2016 Council-approved conceptual plan for Countryside Park, found in the Integrated Stormwater Masterplan. We will upload this to Engage as soon as possible. In the meantime, please email Project Manager Chris Nechacov at Chris.Nechacov@kitchener.ca, and he will send you the conceptual plan. Please note that the conceptual plan only serves as a basis for the preliminary design. Plans may change considerably throughout the design process.