Trans Mountain workers a boon to Kamloops amid pandemic
A year ago, Kamloops officials worried about being able to accommodate a workforce of some 600 arriving to build the seven-kilometre stretch of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project destined to wind through the region.
On June 1, however, as work on the $450-million segment of the project officially kicked off, those workers are viewed as a welcome boost for the city’s hotels and restaurants hit by the COVID-19 shutdown that has devastated tourism all across the province.
“Our general sense here as a chamber of commerce and accommodators is that there’s really no better time, no time that it would have been more needed than now,” said Tyson Andrykew, president of the Kamloops Chamber of Commerce, “just given the economic climate.”
A big chunk of the city’s tourism dried up with suspension of the Rocky Mountaineer rail tour train until at least the end of July. Flights at the Kamloops Airport dropped from 105 per week to three.
“The way that this has all worked out, you’ve now got hundreds of people who require hotel rooms in the city, so it’ll be a pretty significant spend there that will be a real lifeline for a struggling industry,” said Andrykew, who is also regional director for the Sandman Signature hotel chain.
The Kamloops segment of the pipeline represents the first new right-of-way construction for the $7.4-billion expansion project, said Trans Mountain spokeswoman Ali Hounsel, but by summer, “we’ll be building in every spread and we’ll be in many communities.”
“Spread” is the term used to refer to the nine main sections of the project, which each have separate contracts along the 1,100-km route.
Trans Mountain expects to spend $40 million in Kamloops itself during construction of the seven-kilometre Kamloops segment, which is within Spread 5A, a 185-km length of right-of-way that stretches from Black Pines 40 km north of Kamloops and wends its way southwest to the Coquihalla Summit.
Hounsel said their start has been a little bit later than they intended due to the need to establish COVID-19-compliant safety protocols, which include temperature checks, physical distancing requirements, staggering shifts and restricting who has access to sites. Hounsel said contractors were able to layer on COVID-19 safety measures for work that was already underway, such as construction of its terminal facilities on Burnaby Mountain and its Westridge Marine Terminal, and “the work continued, you know, almost uninterrupted.”
In starting to prepare for work in Kamloops in March and April, as B.C.’s COVID-19 outbreak was still rising, “we sort of thought maybe we should take a breath” to get the protocols right. “It’s a seven-kilometre stretch that’s sort of independent, so we could shift that out without having an impact on the overall schedule,” Hounsel said.
However, to increase the project’s impact on Kamloops’ economy, Trans Mountain shifted gears for how it would handle housing workers. Initially, Hounsel said their plan for Kamloops was to hire as many local workers as possible, then pay workers coming in for the job a living-out allowance, recognizing there were concerns that peak construction was going to coincide with the region’s peak tourist season.
“With COVID-19, what we heard all of a sudden there was availability of hotels and a strong desire from that community that we would love to have your people here,” she said.
In a “tight turnaround,” the company worked with the local accommodation association on a strategy to find hotels with enough space to house workers with physical distancing, food services, extra cleaning and meeting spaces to handle some of their needs, such as regular COVID-19 health screening.
For Kamloops Mayor Ken Christian, it helps deal with “the hangover of COVID-19.”
“All of those places are really looking at 2020 and wishing it was the year that wasn’t, you know,” Christian said. The project offers opportunities to fill some of the empty hotel rooms and give local taxis and restaurants a bit more business.
COVID-19 also adds a different light to how Tk’emlups Chief Rosanne Casimir views the project for her community, which has already seen training and business opportunities under an impact and benefits agreement with Trans Mountain.
“When we’re looking at, you know, the impact that (COVID-19) has had on so many when it came to their means for being able to work, for them this means employment, this means food at their table,” Casimir said.
“Our No. 1 thing is making sure to protect our lands and making sure those environmental concerns are taken with the utmost consideration,” Casimir said.