{"id":17795,"date":"2020-11-04T02:00:43","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T06:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelaker.ca\/?p=17795"},"modified":"2020-11-04T02:00:43","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T06:00:43","slug":"milford-rec-association-trails-get-an-upgrade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/?p=17795","title":{"rendered":"Milford Rec Association trails get an upgrade"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;78&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>MILFORD:<\/strong> The trails on the grounds of the Milford Recreation Association have been upgraded to the tune of $40,000, included almost an estimated $30k in-kind work through man hours and donation of materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sandra Watson told The Laker News that the Trails Improvement Project saw widening of the entire trail system, laying landscape fabric under a large 3-4-inch&nbsp;stone base, layered with Class A over the top of the trail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere was more than two kilometers of trail beds redone by this volunteer community group of men,\u201d said Watson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate group=&#8221;2&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;96&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The trails had been built back in the 1990s and maintained over the past 30 plus years through donations, small grants, and volunteer work.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe trails needed upgrades to make the trail system easier&nbsp;to maintain and available for more&nbsp;users,\u201d Watson said. \u201cImprovements were needed to&nbsp;keep the trail system open and in good condition for use by the public.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The&nbsp;trails are used for walking, school&nbsp;running clubs, bike riding,&nbsp;dog walkers and&nbsp;families taking strollers through the trails.&nbsp;In the winter&nbsp;people continue to walk on the trails, but users also snowshoe and cross-country ski as well.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe areas addressed with this project were&nbsp;wet areas on the trail system with the addition of culverts and stone as well as&nbsp;widening of the trails for easier use,\u201d said Watson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She said the most important goal of having this work done was to ensure that the trail system remains viable for the&nbsp;next decade&nbsp;or more,&nbsp;requiring less maintenance due to the upgrades, with the addition of culverts, new stone and widening of the trail system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWooden structures were removed and replaced with new culvert systems, which will not require as much maintenance as wooden structures,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate group=&#8221;8&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;94&#8243;]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>MRA received a grant of $5,000 to support the trails improvement project from the province\u2019s Department of&nbsp;Communities, Culture and Heritage; and $8,000 from the Municipality of East Hants, Department of Parks Recreation and Culture. The grant received from the MEH through the District Recreation Funding was $10,000 overall, with the remaining portion of that grant money&nbsp;going to other work at the hall.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The MRA has already seen increased user traffic on the trails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOur goals were to improve the quality of the trail, and to encourage increased user traffic,\u201d said Watson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The volunteer trails group made their plans for&nbsp;trails improvement and decided what was the course of action needed to accomplish the goals of the project.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe trails group went about their work and&nbsp;had set a target end date for the project&nbsp;of October 31 which they were able to meet,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were approximately 12-15 volunteers involved over the past couple of months, with an estimated&nbsp;800 plus man hours donated for this project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThere was also donated use of tractors from Willy Versteeg, Ken Squire and Ralph Wardrope, and donated culverts, pipe and products from&nbsp;Derek Collins, through&nbsp;his employer Soleno.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Watson said MRA would like to extend thanks and gratitude to the following Milford community members that were on the MRA Trails committee below:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Willy Versteeg; Ken Squire; Ron Sampson; Blaine Mayo; Mike Pelly; Peter Giffen; Dave Manning; Kenny Ross; John Tompkins; Luc Boudreau; Derek Collins; John Tompkins; Ralph Wallis; and Bob MacKay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWithout this fantastic group of volunteers, MRA would not have been able to have this project completed,\u201d said Watson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;84&#8243;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[adrotate banner=&#8221;78&#8243;] MILFORD: The trails on the grounds of the Milford Recreation Association have been upgraded to the tune of $40,000, included almost an estimated $30k in-kind work through man hours and donation of materials. Sandra Watson told The Laker News that the Trails Improvement Project saw widening of the entire trail system, laying landscape [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[965],"tags":[196,1584,1585,1586],"class_list":["post-17795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-hants","tag-east-hants","tag-milford-rec-association","tag-mra","tag-trails"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging-z.thelaker.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}