Westlock County has approved a bid to provide the municipality with gravel for its roads, but the cost remains to be finalized.
At the Aug. 26 council meeting, councillors approved a quote from Barsi Enterprises Ltd. to crush 60,000 cubic metres of 20-millimetre gravel at a cost of $794,600, and 12,000 cubic metres of 25-millimetre gravel at a cost of $823,400.
However, councillors have asked administration to go back to Barsi and look into crushing twice as much gravel — 120,000 cubic metres and 24,000 cubic metres, respectively — in order to have a two-year stockpile. The hope is that would reduce the per-unit cost, although the overall cost would increase.
“We’re trying to be cost-effective if we crush two years,” reeve Bud Massey said. “We already would have paid the transportation charge to bring the equipment here.”
Included in the crushing is dewatering the gravel.
Previously the county had done its own dewatering, but this time the municipality is getting the contractor to do it. Doing so allows the county to find out which method is cheaper and gives the best results.
“Being cheap isn’t always the only answer,” Massey said.
“We have to also have the quality in the results.”
This new load of gravel will be put towards improving the county’s roads, some of which have drawn criticism from residents.
“Several residents indicated the roads get slippery because (the gravel) had a high silt sand content,” he said.
He explained crushing two different gravel sizes would go a long way towards improving the county’s roads, as the different sizes would serve different, but complementary purposes.
While $1.6 million, or more, is a large amount of money, interim county manager Rick McDonald said it’s not that much in the grand scheme of things.
“It’s simply a fraction of our budget for road maintenance, for sure,” he said. “We’ve got 2,700 kilometres of roads to maintain.”
