Terrace Review —

Wednesday, December 5, 1990

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Regional district wrangles with province
over responsibility for dyke at Lakelse

by Tod Strachan

The Kitimat-Stikine Regional
District board of directors is a little
miffed over a letter from the
Ministry of Environment’s acting
inspector of dykes, Ron Henry.
According to Henry, the province
isn’t responsible for maintaining a
dyke on Granite Creek. That res-
ponsibility belongs to the regional
district.

Henry’s letter was in response to
one from the regional district last
month that said it was the pro-
vince’s job to take care of the
dyke. And even with this con-
tinued insistence by the inspector
of dykes, the board still disagrees.
The province built it and the pro-
vince should look after it, they say.

Granite Creek . empties into
Lakelse Lake about a half-mile
north of Lakeilse Lake Lodge
Road, and in his letter to the
board, Henry points out that the

province built the dyke and cleared
the channel of gravel and debris
after the 1978 floods, but from that
point on it belonged to the regional
district.

At the Nov. 24 meeting of the
board, chairman Jack Talstra sug-
gested that the province has done
work on the dyke since 1978 and
Lakelse Lake resident, acting Area
°C’ director Sandy Sandhals,
replied, "They have. Definitely."

But according to Henry, "Our
policy has always been that once
the Province has paid for the capi-
tal cost of constructing the flood
protection works, then local
governments are responsible for
funding the on-going operation and
maintenance costs."

According to the board, however,
the province never asked anyone’s

permission before building the

dyke and have never asked the
regional district to maintain it. And
if they had, the regional district

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‘Where To Find It

would have expected to throw a
few dollars in the kitty to help pay
for annual maintenance.

Henry says the major benefici-
aries of the Granite Creek dyke are

‘adjacent landowners. "The dykes

do tend to protect First Avenue
from being damaged -but not the
main highway," he maintains. "The
Ministry of Parks and Crown
Lands do own land adjacent to the
creek but there are no buildings or
improvements on these lands."
The board disagrees. The pro-
vince does have a stake in the
survival of First Avenue, it’s their
road, and it’s their bailey bridge
that spans the creek. And accord-
ing to at least two regional district
directors, the bailey bridge is the
major cause of the current problem
in Granite Creek: the gradual fill-
ing of the creek bed with eroded

gravel.

According to ‘Terrace board

director Bob Cooper, the design of

the dyke rests with the province;
it’s about 150 feet wide upstream
from the bridge, about 25 feet
wide at the site of the bridge, and

‘about 15 feet high. This funnelling

effect to. the point where the bridge
crosses the creek, agrees Sandhals,
is a big part of the probiem.
Cooper sums up the situation: "It’s
their design and we don’t want to
take responsibility for that."

In the meantime, . though, its

seems no one is ‘willing to main-
tain the dyke, and according to”

Henry routine maintenance is
necessary io ensure it doesn’t
deteriorate and fail during a flood.
Perhaps hoping this revelation
might drive his point home, he
attached a copy of the ministry’s
"Operation and Maintenance In-

structions for Flood | Control

Works".

The board didn’t bite. Andy
Burton. offered a maintenance
solution used in Stewart that might

be a solution of benefit to every-
one. The Ministry of Highways
always needs gravel... Why don’t
they take it out of the creek rather
than one of their unsightly gravel
pits?

With this solution, excess gravel
would be regularly removed from
the creek and Highways would
have a good source of clean
gravel. At an estimated main-
_tenance cost of $5,000, according

to Henry, this idea was well

received by the board.
So the board has invited Henry to

come to Terrace and discuss the

maintenance of the Granite Creek
dyke. They may be willing to
consider a cost-sharing proposal,
they have told him, but they’re not
prepared to assume the whole cost.

The annual maintenance share of .

individual homeowners adjacent to
the creek might be considerable if
Henry’s estimate is correct, and if
the creek floods,:the cost could be
much higher.

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