If you’ve tried to make your way to the Old School Eatery, Jones Distilling, or just across town via third street west, you’ll have noticed the road closure nearly a block in length along the riverside.
The City of Revelstoke is hard at work on the first of a four step effort to tackle the geotechnical issues this section of road has faced.
“It’s a City project to first relocate the sewer main outside of the settling area to eliminate the risk of it failing,” explains Dawn Low, Interim Chief Administrative Officer and Director of Corporate Administration for the City of Revelstoke.
“The second step is to perform some geotechnical investigation. The contractor dug an exploratory test pit last week however there will be more investigation required to determine the full extent and severity of the issue (ie. exploratory test pits, bore holes or both). This work is scheduled to happen in 2020 and should not take more than a couple of days. There may be some monitoring of bore holes required that could take up to 6 months to complete.”
The third step of the project involves having a geotechnical engineer develop a solution based on the results of the investigation. The fourth and final step would be implementing the solution.
“Depending on the length of time required for design, the scope of the project and availability of funding, it is not likely that construction will be possible any earlier than spring 2021. The schedule and duration of the project are unknown at this time,” says Low.
Back in October of 2018, Geoff Battersby, retired Revelstoke doctor, mayor, and recipient of the Order of Canada, talked to the Revelstoke Current about the direction of the city, and the geotechnical issues of this section of road were mentioned.
“Third street, which currently takes most of the traffic, is having issues with sloughing. There have been suggestions that we could close the compromised blocks, bring the green space to the river bank, redirect traffic down second and have a development on the second street side of the school grounds, thus preserving green space while being suitable for higher density housing,” he had said.
The City was unable to comment on the possibility of permanently closing that section of road until all of the planned research had been completed.
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