Residents of Garden Bay have been left wondering whether improvements to a public dock at Hospital Bay will be completed after finding what they believed to be the original plan largely abandoned.
The dock in Hospital Bay has been cited for having congestion problems on the narrow road that feeds it. An original plan of widening the road and adding parking space was felt by some residents to be an adequate solution.
But somewhere along in the planning process, that idea was cast aside in favour of a concrete pier that some residents say fails to address their concerns.
"So what we have is a nice big, beautiful pier which we can't use, and there's no parking," said Ray Kraft, a resident of Garden Bay. "I think a lot of people here are [angry] that they spent that kind of money on a useless piece of equipment."
At the end of the road, a concrete pier now stands that allows traffic to make a three-point turn to leave in the direction they came.
Along the narrow path to the dock, no-parking signs signal the difficulties and hazards created by leaving vehicles parked in the area, especially during summer months when usage rates increase.
To help local fishers, the new plan had also promised a new ramp from the pier to the dock below, one narrower than the existing ramp that would make it easier to load and unload vessels in the harbour.
That ramp has failed to materialize as of yet, leading people like Kraft to wonder if it ever will.
"It was supposed to be in there to help the commercial fishermen," he said. "They're very annoyed too."
Residents in the area said another benefit of the original plan, the one to extend the parking space and widen the road, would also have helped emergency crews responding to the lower docks.
Should an injured person need to be transported from the dock or a fire put out, crews would most likely have to park their vehicles on the top of the hill and make the trek by foot, especially in the summer.
While it would have been nice to see the improvements, said Pender Harbour fire chief Don Murray, it's an unavoidable symptom of the area's geography.
"The fire department's stuck with what the fire department has to work with. Would it be better if it were wider and this was bigger? Yes," he said. "If something happens here, we'll respond."
While the situation at Hospital Bay could conceivably create a delay in responding to an emergency, so far there have been no troubles.
"We've got areas all over the community that have access that's atrocious or non-existent, and we have to live with it," Murray said.
The pier was a small craft harbours project through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). Pender Harbour/Egmont director Frank Mauro said advice was originally sought from the harbour authority and local residents to come up with a plan.
"It is their project. As a harbour authority, we're committed to making sure that gets finished, but it's been a number of years now," Mauro said.
A regional manager with Small Craft Harbours, Robin Richardson, said that a widening of the road is the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
"We did our best with the turn around to at least try and enable vehicles to turn around at the end so they wouldn't have to back up the road," he said. "There's not much we can do about the road."
DFO also confirmed that the gangway has been built and should be installed within the next two months.
