The new, but yet-to-be-opened $2-million-plus Tawatinaw Valley ski chalet may have to be physically lifted to address flooding-related concerns.
At the Jan. 13 Westlock County council meeting, councillors briefly discussed the new plan after hearing the most recent plan to install a ditch and dry pumps may not be workable.
“That may be what it boils down to, is that we have to fill the current and raise it up above that grade,” CAO Peter Kelly said, adding the cost of such a move was as yet unknown. “We’re now going through that process. Once we have all the data and information we’ll bring it back to council for final consideration.”
Following the meeting, reeve Bud Massey said via e-mail that the council is making concerted efforts to protect taxpayers’ assets. He declined an in-person interview.
“Every effort is being made to insure (sic) that actions taken to remediate the issues at the ski hill are being dealt with in a cost-effective and successful manner,” he wrote.
The new ski chalet was scheduled to open in June 2014, but wasn’t opened because during the spring melt, water had got into the crawlspace. A plan to remediate the problem by digging a trench and installing pumps was put out to tender with a closing date of Jan. 9.
While the status of the new chalet was not addressed as a specific agenda item at the meeting, councillors discussed it both when talking about the tender to demolish the old chalet and when councillors provided reports on the opening day of the ski hill, Dec. 26, 2014.
In relation to the tender to install the ditch and pumps, along with some other related-work — which had an advertised closing date of Jan. 9, 2015 —engineering and infrastructure director Bill Mills told council he hadn’t got to that tender yet.
“That tender that’s been put on hold because of information purposes, and because of discrepancies with the ditch, and for the volumes of water and it tying into the creek right now,” he said.
Later in the meeting, as councillors provided reports about their experiences at the ski hill’s opening day — an experience those in attendance described as a positive one — the topic came up of how to address the new chalet.
“On Dec. 26 I spent the whole day there, and I listened,” Massey said. “The most startling thing I found is the flooding doesn’t just come off the hill, it comes across the road from the creek and from the slough/lake.”
He said council did not have that information prior to hearing it on Dec. 26, and said he forwarded that information to county administration.
“I think it was important to give that information to administration so they could look at that tender that we were putting out for the dry-wells, because that surface water coming from across the road is an issue,” he said.
Kelly said administration is now seeking flood-plain information for Tawatinaw from the provincial government, which he said “was not available before.” The plan to remediate the water issue by installing a trench and pumps came about after a report from Matrix Consulting.
Council approved a payment of $17,250 last fall; Massey and Kelly have not responded to repeated requests for a copy of that report, but Massey said in an e-mail that there is a plan to release it.
“The report is being updated and hopefully will be completed shortly, upon its completion, once reviewed by council, the report will be released,” he wrote.
In response to a question about the status of the tender for the remediation work, Massey confirmed they have been put on hold.
“Process paused. Report being updated,” he wrote.
At the meeting, Massey expressed concern that residents hadn’t come forward and told the county about the flooding in Tawatinaw — said to occur every couple years — earlier in the process.
“My concern as a councillor would be that it’s unfortunate that people with local knowledge hadn’t offered that information before,” he said. “It certainly changes some of the decisions that we would have made or would make in the future. But we have it now, so that’s the positive.”
Despite Massey’s concerns that this information was not provided to the county, the concerns about water at the site are well-established. A report prepared by Shelby Engineering in May 2013 raised significant concerns about a crawlspace embedded below grade — which was ultimately built — and about the suitability of the site in general.
“The site stratigraphy is considered to be very poor, and economic and/or timely development of the site is considered to be questionable,” according to the report, which is signed and stamped by two professional engineers.
Massey did would not say how the previous council and/or administration handled that information.
“Unfortunately, decisions made by previous councils cannot be answered to by the current council; to do so, would be only trying to second-guess those decisions,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Current councillors Jim Wiese, Don Savage and Ron Zadunayski, who also sat on the previous council, did not provide any explanation by deadline, but Massey elaborated:
“Council acts as one body and decisions are made collectively and not individually,” he wrote, without commenting further on the Shelby Engineering report.
