Westlock County will begin addressing deficiencies at the Tawatinaw Valley Ski Hill including repairs to the parking lot and fixing landscaping around the chalet as part of a phased construction approach.
At their Sept. 13 meeting, councillors approved $30,000 worth of work to the site this year, while further repairs, estimated at more than $58,000 will be discussed as part of 2017 budget deliberations.
Repairs will include work on the parking lot, adding backfill around the chalet and sloping the dirt.
“We’ll do that backfill around the ski chalet to bring it up to the proper level, cut a bit into the slope and add some steps so we have the correct levels for people to walk up to the ski chalet,” said interim CAO Pat Vincent.
“We’ll finish the parking lot surface with the material we have on site by probably peeling back the gravel, leveling it and then moving the gravel back.”
Vincent said the overall repairs should be the last to rectify the site issues.
“[We want to make sure] council has all the details and that we’re not having any doubt in anybody’s mind as to what’s being done so that there’s a plan in place,” Vincent said.
“[Establish that] it costs X, Y and Z, bring it to budget and have it approved so that we have that plan completed in 2017 and have it done once and for all.”
On June 28, council voted 6-1 to suspend the $2.2 million lease/purchase agreement for the site with DK Consulting due to the site deficiencies.
With a new contract yet to penned with DK, reeve Don Savage acknowledged it’s been a long process and said council is looking forward to finally having the issue settled.
“By the end of next year I’m hoping it’s completely solved. It’s been a long wait,” Savage said.
“We’re trying to get this done. Dom [Kriangkum] has been a very patient leasee.”
Work will begin this fall and will be completed mostly by county crews, but Vincent didn’t rule out the possibility of needing a few contractors.
The remainder of the work will largely focus on rectifying site drainage by diverting water and filling in a large swale.
“We need to do some dredging and channeling of the water to take it to the north, get rid of the pond and run everything out to the ditch along the road,” Vincent said.
“That will go a long way to clearing up some of the problems we have with the high water table, fix the parking lot and a few other aspects of the operation as well.”
Council was provided with estimates, detailing the costs, although Vincent cautioned those costs will likely change.
“I think it’s going to be a little bit more than $58,000, but what we’re working on right now with the engineers is that plan to complete work here and bring it forward as part of the budget process,” he said.
“We’re going to have a parking lot to the south where it originally was, and in addition to that we need 80-100 parking spots under our own municipal land-use bylaw. What we need to do is develop a site plan so that there’s a long-term plan for the development of the parking lots that are going to be needed there on a year-round basis.”
