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County reallocates $150K towards gravelling

To cope with a wet spring that has made it difficult to grade or spread gravel on many roads, Westlock County councillors approved re-allocating $150,000 from the drainage management program to the gravel patching program.
Westlock County council is re-allocating $150,000 towards its gravel program. County brass say the municipality’s extremely poor road conditions are due to the wet weather
Westlock County council is re-allocating $150,000 towards its gravel program. County brass say the municipality’s extremely poor road conditions are due to the wet weather last fall and this spring.

To cope with a wet spring that has made it difficult to grade or spread gravel on many roads, Westlock County councillors approved re-allocating $150,000 from the drainage management program to the gravel patching program.

Director of infrastructure Al Scott told councillors at their July 11 meeting that 2017 has been challenging in terms of road maintenance and applying gravel due to the heavy moisture received last fall, spring and summer.

“The amount and frequency of moisture received in the county has hampered operations to the point where some roads are experiencing extreme degradation,” Scott said.

He said grader operators will finish work on high-volume roads and before they can move on to low-traffic roads the rain will begin again, forcing them to re-do their work. As a result, some roads may not end up seeing a grader for some time.

Although roads do need some moisture to be effectively worked, Scott stressed that it is impossible to grade a road covered in water.

“The grader would cause more damage than it would repair if it was out on the roads grading in the pouring rain,” he said.

Also, loaded gravel trucks travelling in degraded areas cause extensive damage just getting to the areas where they need to spread gravel.

Scott said this issue was not unique to Westlock County and at least one nearby county has gone so far as to apply for disaster relief funding to help offset the costs of repairing damaged roads.

On the plus side, Scott said the roads are now starting to harden and shape up, adding that the vast majority are getting better and will continue to do so as they are consistently worked by the graders.

However, another problem has arisen. Each year, the county requires about 112,000 tonnes of gravel for its spreading program, plus another 20,000 tonnes for the gravel patching program and about 11,000 tonnes for the shoulder pull program, Scott said.

In total, the county needs about 150,000 to 175,000 tonnes of gravel to maintain the current level of services as directed by council.

As of July 11, however, there were only about 2,100 tonnes of gravel left for the rest of 2017, Scott said.

This will not be sufficient given all the moisture issues, along with patching that still needs to be done. In fact, the contractor was set to begin spreading gravel July 12 and would use what’s left.

Scott said there were some budget funds remaining in the contract services portion of the program that could be redirected to either shoulder pull projects or the patching program.

However, his main recommendation was to re-allocate $150,000 from the drainage management program towards the gravel program.

Scott noted the majority of drainage management work has not started this year because all the water in the ditches does not allow for effective work.

The re-allocation would leave $170,000 for a scaled-back drainage program.

“Hopefully with drier weather, this program could begin as early as August and carry on until freeze-up,” he said.

In the future, Scott said the county could look at different options to offset the increasing costs of maintaining roads, such as increasing the amount of shoulder pulls completed each year or the number of graders, which in turn would reduce the amount of roads each grader operator must look after.

He also suggested a road rebuilding program where the county would completely rebuild a certain amount of roadway each year. That would include the base, the sub-base and compacting gravel.

Another option would be to develop an education campaign to inform residents about the challenges in fixing local roads. For instance, a nearby county put on a “Let’s talk about roads” presentation where they invited ratepayers to get information on the services offered by the transportation department, he said.

Another possibility would be to apply for disaster relief funding from the province to assist with repairing roads, though he warned that would likely be unsuccessful.

Coun. Bud Massey said they should perhaps apply for disaster relief funding anyway, noting the cities have been able to access a lot of MSI (Municipal Sustainability Initiative) funding and gas tax funding for their infrastructure because they’ve done a great job of highlighting their needs.

“I believe that municipalities in general, ours included and the Alberta Association of Municipalities and Counties, have done a very poor job of highlighting the need for bridge funding,” he said.

“The amount of debt we have for bridge funding is astronomical. And the amount of money required to maintain … a road network, we’re not able to keep it up.”

Otherwise, Massey thanked Scott for providing a “detailed” report on their gravelling and roadwork program. “This is the kind of report that we should get during budget deliberations, so we can make more intelligent decisions,” he said.

Coun. Dennis Primeau added increasing the amount of shoulder pulls would be very useful in killing tall grass along the shoulders of roads.

Massey added that in his division there were several blind corners where drivers could not see wildlife because of tall grass.


Kevin Berger

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