former Town Engineer Dwayne Acton moved on to a position with Mount Allison<\/a>,) Eppell says he was \u201cquite excited at the opportunity.\u201d One of the reasons Eppell made the move from Halifax Harbour Bridges to Cumberland County was to be closer to family in Sackville, and so the new job was a natural fit.<\/p>\n\u201cI really enjoyed working on suspension bridges, but as time went on, I got tired of the travel,\u201d says Eppell. \u201cAnd so coming to the town of Sackville, where I live, made a lot of sense this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
The work in Sackville, as in Cumberland County, is much more generalized than Eppell\u2019s previous work at Halifax Harbour Bridges. Working first as a consultant for the bridge commission, and later as their full time engineer, Eppell was integral in the third lane project, which added a vehicle lane and two active transportation pathways to the city\u2019s MacDonald Bridge. Then later he worked on the Big Lift, which replaced the entire span of the bridge in pieces, all while the bridge remained open to traffic during most daytime hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would go in on a weekend, and we would remove a 20 meter long segment, 66 feet long, and replace it with a brand new one. And then reopen to traffic through the week, which is highly unusual,\u201d says Eppell. \u201cIt\u2019s only the second time it\u2019s ever been done in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eppell\u2019s Sackville job is less specialized but not without its challenges. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of road and municipal water and sewer type projects, replacing trucks and vehicles and looking after snowplowing and public works,\u201d says Eppell. \u201cA lot of it is returning to what I was doing early on in my career and as a consultant because I did a lot of highway design, road design, services, design, subdivisions, parking lots, that kind of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSackville has got a lot going for it because of where it\u2019s located,\u201d says Eppell, \u201cbut it also has challenges with flood risk from climate change. We all are aware of that and there\u2019s been some projects that have been done there.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a municipal infrastructure deficit common to cities and towns across Canada and the US, says Eppell. \u201cFrom what I can see the town of Sackville is actually in quite a good position, and has dealt with things very well up to this point,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m hoping to continue and build on that as we move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eppell says he doesn\u2019t expect any major changes to the Public Works department in the near future. \u201cI think it\u2019s getting to know the systems and how things are performing and looking for opportunities,\u201d says Eppell. \u201cAs time goes on, I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll evolve a little bit, but I don\u2019t see any wholesale changes now.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the amalgamation, Eppell is positive in his outlook, despite having witnessed a much larger amalgamation (of Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford and the county of Halifax) as a Nova Scotia resident. \u201cIt took them 10 years to kind of get their feet back fully,\u201d says Eppell, \u201cand know how to function with one another. I don\u2019t see this one as being as complicated, because it\u2019s smaller communities, fewer people, and there\u2019s been a close relationship anyway. I think it\u2019s going to go surprisingly well, is my expectation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is, reasonable things are going to be done to ensure that services are continued to be delivered for all of the communities that are in the amalgamation,\u201d says Eppell.<\/p>\n
Eppell says he expects that not all public works projects will meet with universal approval, but he is open to hearing from local residents about their concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no magic to this job,\u201d says Eppell. \u201cIt\u2019s trying to take engineering principles and knowledge and experience that we\u2019ve had from past practices, and apply them to the future, and try to do the best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure there\u2019s going to be lots of people that will disagree with certain aspects of what\u2019s done,\u201d says Eppell. \u201cThere\u2019s always people that do. And we\u2019ll listen, but at the end of the day, we have to try and make the best decision for the majority.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jon Eppell might just be the only person working for the town of Sackville who knew full well when he was hired that the town would be undergoing radical changes in the coming months, including a new name, new boundaries, new communities, and a new government. And he wanted the job anyway. As Sackville\u2019s new…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":119010,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,225],"tags":[11779,19251,3619,4917],"radio":[227],"origine":[274,275,277],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119005"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119018,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119005\/revisions\/119018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119005"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=119005"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=119005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}