Revitalizing a vast area to support sustainability of natural ecosystems and offset the impact of a major project on surrounding wetlands

Highway 35 Environmental Compensation

The Highway 35 extension project will connect Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu to the US border and will eventually provide a direct highway route between Montreal and Boston. To offset the impact of this major project on the surrounding ecosystem, the Quebec government mandated the ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable (MTQ) to include an environmental compensation to its extension project. Our team helped the MTQ comply with that request.

Our environmental, landscape architecture, and hydrology professionals combined their expertise and creativity to generate over four hectares of feeding and breeding habitat for fish, such as pike. We also recreated a hectare of natural wetlands to support local wildlife, such as turtles and swallows. Our landscaping design incorporated nature-based solutions, while respecting the biological needs of the local species and restoring the fundamental water filtration and retention capacities of the site. To bring the nature-inspired theme full circle, our team designed irrigation basins in the shape of a white-tailed deer track, fish breeding ponds in the shape of a beaver footprint, and the irrigation channels in the overflow plains took on the appearance of leaf veins.

This aesthetic approach to the design allowed for a greater assortment of shapes in the landscape—the nature-inspired appearance of this restoration reflects the imagination of our biologists, engineers, and landscape architects who worked on this project.