Council recently heard from Sundre’s operations manager that construction on the second phase of the multi-million-dollar Main Avenue West upgrade, which started last year, is progressing “on course and schedule.”
“The Main Avenue project is going along really nicely,” said Jim Hall during the Sept. 9 meeting when council resumed regularly scheduled sessions following the summer hiatus.
“If you’ve noticed, there’s been a lot of pumping of the water because we’ve had super saturation.”
The operations manager said he recorded some videos to illustrate to council for anyone who had not seen for themselves just how much groundwater seeps into excavated pits to install new pipes. Two six-inch pumps have been running vigorously to prevent the pit from filling up, by extension allowing the construction crew to complete the piping as well as a casing for TransCanada infrastructure, he said.
“We’ve had no issues with the TransCanada lines, which is great, because we don’t want to hit those,” he said.
Depending on the successful completion of a planned pressure test on the piping that day to determine whether there were any leaks in the new line, Hall said backfilling could then proceed followed by grading in anticipation of repaving the road.
“We have our approvals from AT (Alberta Transportation) for doing some of the elevated pathway and the storm work,” he said.
“We’re just waiting for Fortis now to come in and help move some of their light poles that are in the way.”
Hall’s report also included an update on the municipality’s planned sewage lagoon upgrades.
“We did a major review of the engineering,” he said.
Council had previously approved allocating more than $1 million towards the critical project. The review, he said, identified several ways to reduce that overall cost, “just from scope and some material changes that we didn’t actually need. What we want to do is utilize the money within that approved amount to do some further repairs to our lift station that’s been (affected) by quite a bit of erosion due to hydrogen sulfide and some issues with the lining. This will reduce that project cost in the future with the big upgrades, so we’re probably going to get a little more bang for our buck out of the amount you have approved for us.”
Coun. Cheri Funke didn’t have a question but commented to express appreciation for the assistance Hall’s staff provided in regards to addressing concerns that were spreading on social media about the water being pumped out of the excavation pit into the drainage ditch running along the south side of Highway 27.
Expanding on that note, Hall said, “We follow very strict procedures…between my operators and myself, we have four of us that continuously monitored that every two hours so that UG (the contractor) could continue pumping and we weren’t impacting Prairie Creek.”
Social media, he said, can quickly get out of control, which prompted him to prepare a statement that was disseminated online by one of his colleagues who is familiar with the digital platforms.
Coun. Paul Isaac said the issue of social media enabling unsubstantiated claims to spread will only continue to grow, and should serve as a further reminder to council just how important properly communicating with the community is.
The councillor suggested taking a more proactive approach in such cases by providing information on projects or plans in advance, rather than the reactive approach of responding to comments after they’ve already started making the social media rounds.
A similar situation developed last year, when Hall said a caller contacted him and also reported the concern to Alberta Environment and Parks, which in turn sent down an officer to meet with the operations manager.
“He saw our procedures and gave us a clean bill of health,” said Hall.
This year, however, no one with concerns called Hall directly, despite the fact his department’s contact information is readily available.
Mayor Terry Leslie said the nature of social media is unpredictable, and encourages people with concerns to contact the municipality so they can be put in touch with someone who can address any questions they have. The town office can be reached at 403-638-3551.
“We’re a service organization, that’s what we want to do,” said Leslie.
“We adhere to the highest environmental standards…we want pristine water in our community, the same as anybody else,” he said.
Coun. Rob Wolfe wondered what the Main Avenue project’s schedule for completion was, and whether the three-metre-wide asphalt path would also be finished this year.
“Everything’s planned to be done by October 31st,” said Hall, adding roadwork was expected to soon be underway.
“The elevated pathway and stormway will go this year.”
The only thing that will not occur immediately, he said, citing the government’s slow-moving bureaucratic process, is a measure to further protect the creek.
“We are trying to protect Prairie Creek with an oil grit separator. And that oil grit separator is being delayed because they didn’t give us approvals in time to meet the spawning deadline of the fish. So that’ll be done in the spring.”
Chief administrative officer Linda Nelson sought to clarify which pathway Wolfe referred to, and council heard that while the elevated boardwalk should be done this year, the asphalt path might not be completed until the spring.
Council carried a motion accepting Hall’s report as information.
