Geotechnical work continued through the winter on the 10 slides that impacted some of the main roads in the Cariboo over the past few years.
John Babineau is the Deputy Director of the Cariboo Road Recovery Program.
“The geotechnical investigation piece is always really important for us, to really make sure we can understand the slide as much as possible. Folks would have seen geotechnical work happening last fall and through the winter on our projects and we’re expecting more of that to be kicking off here this spring, usually once the snow is off the ground.”
Babineau says they have continued to develop the design and the preferred options for these 10 sites.
He says all of these projects are long term.
“These landslides are all complex, they’re challenging projects and we’re taking a thoughtful process to make sure we understand the slides to the best of our ability, we understand the options that are available, and we work towards a diligent process to determine what the long term solution is at each of these sights.”
Babineau says they are also getting ready for the upcoming freshet.
“We’ve got some rock haul happening out in the Quesnel River Valley moving some material from one of our quarries up the hill down closer to the river. That’s really ahead of spring freshet here to make sure we’re ready to go in the event that we see new activity happening on these slides.”
He says they have geotechnical monitoring in place at three key slides.
“That’s the Cottonwood Hill north of town, out on Blackwater Road at the North Fraser slide, and on Quesnel-Hydraulic Road at the temporary access there. That will give us real time monitoring during freshet, so we can really get on top of any movement if it does occur.”
Babineau says these are very expensive projects and he believes they are committed to spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to resolve these issues and make sure that these sites are safe, reliable, resilient, meeting today’s standards, meeting future climate standards, and are available for residents in the Cariboo for a long time to come.