The day after Red Deer County councillors agreed to pump $2.5 million into repairing its rain-ravaged road network they got a frightening reminder of why the money is needed.
A Chinook’s Edge school bus taking children to school narrowly missed plunging into a collapsed section or county road just northeast of Bowden on Wednesday morning.
Fortunately, only three children suffered minor injuries in the mishap when the bus driver saw too late that a section of road had simply disappeared.
While this was one of the more dramatic signs of the toll the wet spring has played on county roads, work crews have been busy patching and fixing dozens of soft spots and repairing washed-out or broken culverts, and unblocking backed-up creeks .
The county had $750,000 set aside in its budget to handle the routine repair jobs that crop up every year. But that won’t be enough this year.
To keep on top of the damage, council approved an additional $2.5 million for road work this year. The money will be pulled out of a reserve fund.
Councillor Dave Hoar, whose division the damaged road falls in, said the wash-out is the kind of problem council had in mind when it boosted funding.
“Absolutely. That’s one spot we didn’t know we were going to be sending it but we will.”
Marty Campbell, the county’s director of operations, said this spring has been the wettest in years and follows a winter with heavy snowfalls.
“We’ve had a lot of black dirt boil up all over the county,” he said.
Campbell said there’s been so much runoff in places, earth around culverts is getting washed out and sometimes culverts have been completely pushed out of position as happened in the school bus incident. The water also washed much of the roadway downstream.
“That’s happened in other locations through the county this year — more than we’ve seen this year. It’s very unusual year. Normally, we just have the flooding and the washouts in the West Country.”
The presence of a beaver dam likely made the problem worse.
A contractor had removed some beaver-caused blockages just last week.
In 2007, similar road problems were faced because of heavy rains but the damage was mostly limited to roads in the west end of the county. The repair bill that year was $2.3 million.
Two years early, the spring flood hit the southwest corner of the county and another $1.1 million was spent fixing the damage.
“This year, it’s coast to coast in the county. Mostly in the east, they’ve seen more than they ever have before.”
About 70 to 80 sections of road have needed work and, so far, about 50 of those have been addressed.
“What we need are at least two weeks of good, dry weather and then we’ll have the majority of them completed.”
Wet weather hasn’t been the only culprit behind road damage.
Older construction methods (standards were changed in 1997) and signficant increases in residential, agriculture and oilfield traffic are also to blame.
Mayor Jim Wood said council has already toured the problem areas.
“It’s important to recognize that the money we invest in these roads is not just for this year, but it’s for many years down the road.
“We’re not just bandaiding these roads we’re actually fixing them properly as we go,” he said.
“It has been a challenging year. It continues to rain, but operations is doing what they can. They’re out there fixing and repairing the best they can with the weather.”
An application has also been made to the province for $1.4 million from its Disaster Recovery Program to cover April damage. If that is approved, the cash will go back into the reserve.
pcowley@www.reddeeradvocate.com