The cost of dealing with the problems along Baker Creek in Wet Quesnel are starting to really add up.
City Manager Byron Johnson updated City Council at Tuesday night’s meeting…
“The response costs to date are about 200 thousand dollars of spending. Of that a hundred thousand dollars is for the rip rap program where we armored Baker Creek. 45 thousand for the water main repair, five thousand dollars for a geotechnical review of one or two properties there on Hushcroft, and 50 thousand of other expenditures including pulling the sweeps out of the River right at the bridge there, and running pumper trucks to handle some of the sewage when the line was down.”
Johnson says there also costs associated with maintaining and operating the temporary sewer line, as well as the rental…
“It’s about a kilometre and a half I believe and a large pump, is about 30 thousand dollars a month. In addition to that the other ongoing monthly expense is security for that. Security maintains a presence at the pump station itself so no one is in there messing with the pump, and more importantly that the pump doesn’t shut down. If it does there is a procedure so we get it back operational fairly quickly. In addition they are doing tours of the actual pipe. The pipe runs right along the roadside so it’s fairly vulnerable, so they do maintain that but it’s 30 thousand dollars a month.”
Johnson says none of those numbers even include the actual permanent fix to the problem…
“There is about 200 meters of sewer line that actually went into Baker Cree. That need to be replaced but where it was sitting is washed out, so odds are we will have to relocate that line. When I asked Director Cobin the costs of that, he said he could not picture a solution for less than a million dollars, and quite easily could be two million or more. It is being looked at by engineers to come up with some of the options on that.”
Johnson says parts of Baker Creek still need to be rip rapped as well.
While the city may qualify for some disaster funding, Johnson says that caps out at 80 percent at the most and that the city would be responsible for at least the remaining 20 percent.
Banks along Baker Creek were eroded, trees were knocked down and power knocked out to the area late last month.