There's been a lot of digging and a lot of dirt piled up around the Humboldt Court House this summer, where there was once flowers and grass.
But don't worry - it will be back to normal next summer, and court is going on as scheduled.
"We're doing work on the courthouse to improve drainage around the building," Al Mullen, Assistant Deputy Minister of Project Management and Development for the Ministry of Central Services, told the Journal last week.
Crews are excavating around the building, installing weeping tiles and water proofing the walls of the basement.
The courthouse, built in 1916, is "an old building," Mullen said. "We've had some basement water challenges... (so this is) work that needs to be done on the building."
Inside, they have to fix floors and walls as well, due to those water issues.
It's been a "freeze-thaw" situation in the basement with the water, Mullen indicated, which put some structural pressure on the walls.
"We're repairing that and fixing any issues around that," he said.
Flooding in the area in the past couple of years did not cause the problems in the courthouse basement, Mullen said.
"We knew it had to be done, so we planned for the work and will get it done this year."
The basement of the courthouse is used as storage space for court, Mullen explained.
After the work is done, it will still be used as storage space, he said, but it will be safe from water leakage.
Outside, once the waterproofing work is done, they will be backfilling the holes and, due to the amount of grass and flowers that had to be ripped up, will be doing some landscaping repairs as well.
Work on the courthouse started in June and should be done by the fall of 2012.
In the meantime, Provincial Court will be held in the Humboldt Courthouse as usual.
