BADDECK: Roads and bridges in two parts of Inverness County are slated to receive upgrades prior to the end of the current construction season, according to the provincial Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal and the county’s MLA.
DTIR officials have confirmed that a tender has gone out to carry out slope stabilization on a portion of East Margaree Road that has experienced erosion issues near the Margaree River, while the department is also hoping to release an engineers’ report that may contain potential solutions to repair or replace the Crowdis Bridge in Valley Mills, according to Inverness PC MLA Allan MacMaster.
While the bridge has remained largely unusable since it was damaged by a motor vehicle accident in May, sending many residents of Valley Mills and the surrounding communities on a 16-kilometre detour in either direction, MacMaster is hopeful that recent details from DTIR officials will result in a plan of action later this fall.
“It’s a daily inconvenience for many people, and they’re just hoping that government is not delaying on it, that they’re making every effort to get this bridge and get this link restored as soon as possible,” said MacMaster, who tabled a petition from Valley Mills residents in late October at the provincial legislature.
“There is a report that is very close to coming out, and that was an engineer’s report on how they would actually fix the bridge… The minister, at that point, would have the opportunity to proceed with taking action on the plan. So it’s something I’ll be inquiring further about.”
In the meantime, the area manager for the DTIR’s Victoria-North Inverness district office, Steve MacDonald, has confirmed the issuing of a tender to address slope failure at the East Margaree Road, which has been reduced to one lane of traffic for a 200-metre stretch.
“There’s subsidence along the edge of the Margaree River, and basically what you get is soft soil conditions and the soil continues to slide down towards the river,” MacDonald told The Reporter last week from his office in Baddeck.
“So they’ll be going down with some armour rock material and some rock fill to stabilize the embankment. I think there’s a little bit of realignment at the road level up top, with a new asphalt surface for a section on the approaches where the failure is now, along with new guardrail treatments and so on. But the bulk of the work is the stabilization of that embankment.”
MacMaster was pleased to hear of action on the part of the DTIR, which also installed traffic lights along East Margaree Road as a precautionary measure.
“The next thing is to make sure that whoever wins that tender is asked to work on it right away,” said the Inverness MLA.
“I think people are very frustrated that it’s taken so long, especially when you look at the site. It looks really dangerous when you have the road sliding away, down a bank and into the river. I think people saw it as something that they’re surprised wasn’t fixed sooner.”