No deal yet, but berm work continues
A new phase in the Industrial Avenue Berm will leapfrog private land where an agreement is still outstanding for the city to buy and build flood defences, planners revealed on Wednesday.
Work north of a spur rail line near Medalta Potteries has been underway since last fall, and a contract could be awarded this week for work south of Industrial Avenue.
In between, however, remains open land owned by I-XL industries where planners hope to join the two incoming berm sections next year, after a purchase agreement can be completed.
Officials from both the company and the city’s land department told the News that negotiations are continuing, and the sale could be completed soon.
However, city infrastructure said they don’t want to delay work on land they’ve already acquired, and the subsequent work would be scheduled afterward.
“We’d like to have it tendered and completed in 2019,” Dwight Brown, the general manager of the city’s municipal works department, told council’s infrastructure committee on Wednesday.
Until then, stressed Brown, temporary flood walls could be used to fill gaps if the need arises.
“We’re preparing for whatever the river and creeks could throw at us.”
Work on the first 500-metre phase could be completed at the end of June, said Brown. That portion is the start of one of the last major pieces of permanent flood measures announced after the 2013 flood, which backed up along the Seven Persons and Ross Creeks, causing damage to houses in the River Flats and the light industrial area.
The project was originally split into two phases to mesh with land acquisitions along the berm route.
Adminstrators said in late 2017 that land arrangement was taking longer than expected because the city requires extensive testing for environmental contamination before acquisitions of the former industrial sites could proceed.
Land Department officials again reiterated that the municipality needs to knows if it is acquiring clean-up liability along with land for the flood walls.
“Issues that are taking some time to work through relate to the past industrial uses of this site — and, in fact, the entire Industrial Avenue area,” wrote land and business support office manage Grant MacKay. “And potential environmental concerns ... must be understood and satisfactorily addressed in any agreement reached.”
The land in question was once the site of I-XL subsidiary National Porcelain Iinsulators until the plant burned in the early 1970s.
Malcolm Sissons of the familyowned building materials business, said the land in question might be of limited value considering the flood risk, but both sides are working towards a deal.
“We’re not opposing the deal, we’re waiting for it to be completed,” he told the News.
Currently, crews are nearing completion on Phase I, which essentially extends the Lion’s Park Berm southward alongside the Medalta site to a spur rail line that once serviced the I-XL Brick Plant to the east.
That land was acquired last year from Chinook Greenhouses.
Owner Milt Pancoast told the News that the land between his Bridge Street facility and the Seven Persons Creek had been earmarked for more future expansion.
However, he said, the parcel was excessive, and considering he also owns land to the north for possible expansion, he would rather have the berm issue settled to protect his facility.
The tender for work on berm line south of Industrial Avenue closed on Thursday. A contract could be officially awarded in early June.
That contract requires the winner to work within the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline right-of-way and according to CP construction regulations.
As well, companies on any section of the berm in the area must have an archeologist on site to investigate any artifacts possibly related to the protected national historic site at Medalta, or possibly, from earlier Indigenous settlements.