Double spending on Mountain accesses: report
Councillors resigned to investing millions of dollars more on landslide-plagued thoroughfares to ensure public safety
The city is looking at ripping down the remaining metal walls covering the cliffs above the landslide-plagued Claremont Access, but it won’t be cheap.
The city hired consultants to study Mountain-climbing roads across Hamilton after the discovery of a failing metal bin wall on the Claremont — near the site of a 2012 wall collapse that spurred a major landslide.
The road reopened earlier this year after $1.3 million in temporary repairs, but falling rocks and mudslides have since briefly closed the Kenilworth and Sherman accesses as well.
Councillors will consider a longawaited staff report Monday that recommends doubling the annual rockfall prevention budget and spending around $10 million over several years on major protective wall work for three particularly at-risk accesses, including the Claremont.
Councillors appear resigned to the big spend.
“It’s money versus safety. At the end of the day, safety has to prevail,” said west Mountain Coun. Terry Whitehead, noting the 1970era bin walls appear to be hiding more problems than they are preventing.
“We’re going to have to do something and we’re just going to have to find the money,” added central Mountain Coun. Donna Skelly.
The report warns escarpment walls and structures in particular “represent a large component of future risk and liability” for the city, with more studies on more accesses to come.
The report suggests just removing several large sections of metal bin wall — some of which are buckling or burst — will cost around $7.5 million, although that work can be safely spread over several years if annual monitoring and maintenance is ramped up.
More study is required to figure out how to make the newly bared slope safe for the 22,000 daily motorists below and homeowners above, near the scarp edge, the report says.
The report also highlights $2.5 million in planned retaining wall repairs under the Sherman Access west leg (that work is slated for this summer) as well as another needed $2.5 million to rebuild Fifty Road and stop ongoing slope movement with a new wall.
The report also proposes more than doubling the $450,000 spent annually on rock scaling and other rock-fall prevention maintenance on bare slopes to $1 million.
East Mountain Coun. Tom Jackson had previously said he would push for such a budget boost.
“Given what we’re seeing with the impacts of climate change and severe weather … we can’t afford to maintain the business as usual approach,” he earlier told The Spectator.
Major spending on the Claremont isn’t proposed before next year’s capital budget at the earliest.