City preparing for busy capital infrastructure season

June 1, 2026 - With road, water and sewer work starting to get underway, the City is launching into another year of aggressive investment into infrastructure renewal.

Work this year includes a record-setting $4.1-million Road Rehabilitation Program alongside road, water and sewer work including:

• Combined sewer separation (including water, sewer and road) on Ontario Street; Johnston Street; Queen Street; College Avenue; and George Street
• Pumping Station 16 capacity upgrades for flood mitigation
• Full reconstruction including road, water, sanitary sewer, and storm sewer on Copland Road and Kathleen Avenue
• Phase 1 work on Mitton Street combined sewer separation and reconstruction

The effort marks a continuation of a multi-year focus on infrastructure renewal. Over the previous five years the City has invested $262 million in capital, representing a 34 per cent increase in capital spending, including road resurfacing, shoreline protection, flood mitigation, pumping station upgrades, combined sewer separation, and water / sewer replacement.

Since 2023, and including work planned for 2026, the City has replaced or installed:

• 17.4 km of watermains
• 7.7 km of sanitary sewer
• 3.5 km of forcemain
• 6.7 km of storm sewer

In that same period 89.2 km of road lane has been resurfaced, and 43.7 km of lane has been rebuilt, along with the installation of 13.3 km of multi-use path and 6.5 km of bike lane.

"It will certainly be a busy summer as we continue this effort to renew infrastructure, roads, water and sewer infrastructure continue to be a priority with the support of Council as identified in our Asset Management Plan. It can be disruptive at points, but investments of resident tax and rate dollars such as these eliminate the need for costly repairs and strengthen infrastructure against flooding while ensuring our residents can count on roads to get them where they need to go; on clean drinking water reliably provided at the tap; and the safe removal of wastewater from neighbourhoods," said General Manager of Engineering and Operations David Jackson.

This year the City is working to modernize how it communicates capital infrastructure investments alongside traffic disruptions caused by construction and emergency repairs. Specifically, the City is moving to utilize the Municipal 511 mapping system to modernize how drivers are notified of road closures.

Traditionally the City has relied on traffic alerts sent via email and SMS to registered Sarnia Lambton Alerts users, which has not provided for map-based updates, notably to the navigation apps and software such as Google Maps and Waze used by drivers. By utilizing the 511 system, road closure information will be automatically pushed into Waze and Google Maps, meaning GPS users will have reliable information for trip planning.

At the same time, residents will be able to visit www.sarnia.ca/Construction to view planned infrastructure projects alongside current road closures.

As part of the transition to Municipal 511, Sarnia Lambton Alert traffic notifications will be discontinued as of July 2, 2026.