A review of some of the key points from the May 20th Town Hall on Rail Safety hosted by Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Taylor Bachrach made for part of the discussion Monday night at Prince Rupert City Council,
That as Councillor Nick Adey, who has been appointed as the city's point person on the subject outlined some of his observations from the forum, as well as some thoughts from local participants in that May virtual town hall.
The Councillors update included an overview of the presentation by Rail Safety advocate and author, Bruce Campbell who wrote a book on the Lac Megantic disaster in Quebec.
The main thrust of his contribution to the forum was to explain that there is no such thing as no risk when it comes to the transport of goods by rail.
Mr Adey adding that Campbell had observed as to some of the safety measures in place and how they are subject to change by the railway, further noting how the author had outlined how the government needed to do more in the way of oversight of rail safety planning by the railways.
"It's not that the companies aren't aware of the issue. It seems that there is a bit of a lag or a discrepancy between the existence of the regulations and the will or the ability to measure how successful they are and in that context there is a very powerful relationship between the major rail companies and Transport Canada which would oversee these things" -- Some of Councillor Nick Adey's observations of a recent Town Hall Forum on Rail Safety hosted by MP Taylor Bachrach
Another key element of the forum relayed by Councillor Adey were observations public participation and towards the need to protect the workers at the railroads.
"There need to be better measures to improve public participation in a discussion about rail safety and the second was that he felt that there were two ways in which the workers for the railcompanies needed to be protected more actively. One was in the area of fatigue management and the other was on whistle blower protection in the event that there was a problem that a worker becomes aware of"
When it came to the local contributors to the town hall, Mr. Adey noted the following from those who participate in the forum from the Prince Rupert area.
An under reporting of dangerous goods incidents in the Prince Rupert region.
A sense of local government had a hard time being listened to on the issue as its a federal concern, with a recommendation of frequent dialogue with the MP
Concerns were expressed on issues of noise and vibration for those near rail infrastructure as well as speed.
To that topic, Mr. Adey noted that with the introduction of the propane facilities in Prince Rupert the reduced speed measures have been implemented in the region.
There was also a call by one participant for national standards related to noise, speed limits and concerns of toxins that are transported.
A CN Rail Propane Train pulling into the Pembina Shipment Terminal on Watson Island (photo from Pembina library)
On the theme of dangerous goods and the potential for incidents, Councillor Adey observed that it would be the local First Responders in the community would be the first on the scene, with the corporate response personnel based in Terrace in the Northwest.
"If there is an incident in say the Prince Rupert waterfront area, or in our region somewhere, it is our local first responders who are going to be the first ones on the scene. The railway companies have staff and personnel who are trained in dealing with it, but they are not here. They would need to come from further away, I think Terrace is the closest place. So there's a lag time there where it really does depend on our first responders. So there needs to be, and I know there is a relationshipbetween first responders here and the companies, in terms of emergency planning. But it's not something that the public necessarily has very much access to in terms of the details"
The need for additional dialogue among all stakeholders not just in Prince Rupert but along the entire CN corridor in the Northwest, was one of the key points that the Councillor took from the forum.
Mr. Adey also noted he had much more material from the session and if anyone wanted to discuss the issue of rail safety they could contact him for further information on the Town Hall and other themes.
You can review his full presentation from the City's Video archive starting at the one hour forty minute mark.
More notes on Monday's Council session can be explored from our Council Timeline.
Maps of the City's Ridley Island Landfill expansion (from recent BC Bid package)
The quest for supplies for the City's Ridley Island landfill expansion project has hit some rough patches, with the City's Operations Director Richard Pucci having lost out on a couple of shipments of important material owing to the city's purchasing policies.
In a report to Council on Monday evening, Mr. Pucci outlined some of the frustrations that the COVID pandemic has brought to the world of procurement, noting how price fluctuations that can change by the day are resulting in missed opportunities to access the supplies required.
"The operations department recognizes that the ongoing pandemic related disruptions in the supply chain, is really now focused on these long lead items. So we're looking at sourcing this material actually out of Dubai. The material, the cost of the material fluctuates daily and basically we are having challenges having the suppliers hold the prices that will allow us two weeks to come forward and get council approval. The value of this, for these products is going to be around two million dollars, but this is all included within the Capital project for the landfill expansion. So what the request is, is that Council allow us to move forward to purchase these long lead items, get them on a ship over here so that we can have them installed in time for opening the landfill cell and then what I will do is report on the total cost of these items at a later date, once we've secured them and had them shipped over"
In reply to a question from Councillor Blair Mirau, Mr. Pucci explained that current situation he is facing is as a result of the city's purchasing policies for items over one million dollars.
"It is because the purchase is over a million dollars, so in our purchasing policy we need to get permission from Council for a purchase of that size, we don't have signing authority for that. But there is no way for these guys to be able to hold their rates, as its fluctuating daily with the petroleum price, because that's what this product is made from. So we need to act immediately, we've already lost opportunities to have it on a boat twice now. So we need to get that here, we have space to house it within our warehouse if it gets here early We just need to secure that long lead item, because everyone is going to be doing landfill expansions and all of these things and we need to secure our materials now"
In follow up conversation, Councillor Niesh offered his support to the purchasing plan and offered up some background to the theme, noting how private industry and construction in particular is facing similar challenges.
While Councillor Nick Adey observed at to how Mr, Pucci may move ahead to seek out the best price with his new window of purchasing.
Towards the purchase plan, the Mayor offered the full support of Council towards Mr. Pucci's request.
"I think we trust you guys to be a able to pull that off, because I think you guys have been pretty fantastic in terms of cost savings on lots of different projects we've done"
Curiously the Council members did not take advantage of the briefing to ask if the pandemic related disruptions in the supply chain have impacted on other major projects.
Missing out on a chance for an update on such civic ventures as the Shawatlan's Lake Water Dam construction, or ongoing work at the Watson Island Intermodal Trade and Logistics Park, or even when it comes to day to day purchasing by the city's operations department.
You can review Mr. Pucci's presentation to Council and their signal of the green light on spending from the City's Video Archive page starting at the one hour thirty three minute mark.
More notes on Monday's Council session can be explored from our Council Timeline.
Prince Rupert's Roads and what the city has planned towards rehabilitation of them was one of the key topics from Monday's City Council Session
For residents of Prince Rupert rattling around on crumbling roads and dodging potholes, there's good news and bad news ahead for 2021.
The Good News, the City has awarded its paving contract for the year ...
The Bad News, probably by the end of the work sometime in September, there's a good chance many around town are going to be disappointed that their street was passed over again this year.
Monday's City Council session provided for an extensive review of the challenges of road infrastructure for the City, first as we noted yesterday, through the wide ranging discussion on the prospect of introducing a Local improvement Bylaw to tackle neighbourhood projects.
As part of that discussion, City Manager Robert Long explored the idea of Local Improvements, with residents getting together with the City to put the improvements in place on a 50/50 shared cost.
"Many municipalities have something called the Local Improvements and we've talked to council about this on a number of occasions, where, where the neighbourhood gets together and says I'm sick and tired of these potholes, lets get together and lets pave the laneway and we'll put it on our taxes, in that location for say twenty years. We'll ask for the municipality to chip in a share, usually that share in most municipalities I've worked in is fifty percent. So the general taxpayer pays for fifty percent of the improvements"
Mayor Brain also noted of the city's efforts to double the paving budget in the last year, though that increase in funding mostly came through the delivery of money by way of the Gas Tax and not any actual commitment from Council to put more money towards the community's growing concerns over the state of the roads.
Those discussion themes were followed by the Awarding of the paving contract for the year to Adventure Paving, with their bid coming in at just under 864,000 dollars.
Through the course of a Report from the City's Operations Director Richard Pucci (which we previewed here) the city's approach towards the paving program was explained.
"The City annually completes paving under the Capital Paving program, the paving undertaken by this program only covers trouble spots throughout the community, it is not a blanket paving program it's more of a skip patching program"
As part of the discussion, Councillor Blair Mirau offered up some praise for the Operations Director's work on the file.
"I always tend to say this to Mr. Pucci, whenever he makes our jobs incredibly easy by presenting you know the lowest and only compliant bid happens to belong to a local contractor, so when those factors come together it's always an easy decision"
Mayor Lee Brain retuned to some themes from the City Manager from earlier in the night and raised the topic of a larger plan for multi year paving as it was the case in the past.
"My only question would be, Mr. Long brought up the fact that we used to have kind of a list I guess over time, does the Operation Department have kind of a list on multi year plan, or is it mainly health and safety, high priority as they arise areas for now until we can kind of get a more steady paving program going, what's the methodology I guess you could say right now"
In reply, Mr. Pucci provided the thumbnail sketch as to how his department has handled the paving issues over recent years.
"Unfortunately, we're really only looking one year in advance, we know right now what we're doing for this year, we're scoping out trouble areas for next year, but we can't advance it any further than that. A lot of it depends on where we have major breaks, and other issues; road rehabilitation to try and leverage some of the funds to do these works. And we always try and spread the paving throughout the community as best we can on the east and west side. And we tried to do it again this year the best we can and we do have a decent spread. But areas just seem to pop up right after winter, around right now and they just show themselves and we have to deal with them
The Mayor followed up by seeking further background on the difference between the annual paving program and some wider capital works road work that is needed.
"So some of our roads are actually capital projects then in the end, because there's sub strata issues that are within, depending on certain neighbourhoods how the town was filled back in the day ... so is it not just that we can't just put money yearly into a paving program, that some of it will be actual capital investments, where we actually have to do full rebuilds of certain areas and it's not really worth paving them in some respects, is that correct?"
Towards that observation the Operations Director made note of the financial challenges facing the city and how that impacts on any road remediation projects they may take on.
"Yeah, that is correct, we have to look at the where the money, there isn't a lot of money as council is aware and the community is aware, so we have to look at where the best place to put that money is. So if we're planning to do a major capital improvement with a road rehabilitation, it's best to save that money and renew a whole street at once ... and then put that capital towards sewer, water, roads, sidewalks curb and gutter and get a whole new infrastructure out of it that will last a lot longer. You know, no one likes to see fresh asphalt cut up because we have a water leak directly underneath it. That's not what we want to do that's not what we intend to do, but unfortunately it sometimes happened with the state of our infrastructure."
Council's work on developing an Asset Management plan to save for such infrastructure work also made for part of the overview on the city's ongoing challenges.
Mr. Puccired shared his enthusiasm for that approach, observing that they have a couple of areas of the city they are planning to address with extensive work over the course of several years.
"We have a couple of areas of town where we planning to do capital improvements through major road rehabilitation over several years and those areas, it wouldn't be a good to invest in a little bit of asphalt right now it's better to wait and raise the funds to do a major capital improvement.
Councillor Cunningham raised the topic of last years paving and the need for some warranty work, something which the Operations Director noted would be addressed by the contract who is currently working in a neighbouring community and will come into Prince Rupert to address the concerns.
The overview of the challenges of a crumbing infrastructure was a helpful guide to what the city is up against, but one area which was not discussed was how City Council prioritizes its overall spending on a year to year basis.
With Council having focused much of their attention on a range of other projects, initiatives and vision planning exercises over the last seven year; while the roads apparently continue to be put on the back burner and a topic that only seems to capture more attention during the annual road paving announcement.
You can review the full presentation from the City's Video Archive starting at the one hour twenty six minute mark.
More notes on Monday's Council session can be explored from our Council Timeline.
Flood watches, warnings and High Stream advisories are growing in number from notices through the River Forecast Centre
Update: The City of Terrace has activated its Emergency Operations Centre due the risk of flood to the community, access more information here.
Original story
The waters are rising fast along many of the Rivers and streams of the Northwest with the River Forecast Centre issuing a range of bulletins today to alert residents of the region to the quickly changing conditions.
Along the Skeena the water is rising from Old Remo towards points east, with both the Skeena River and the Kispiox River under Flood watches, while High Stream Advisories have been issued for the Bulkley River and Nass River.
Todays update from the River Forecast Centre notes of the impact of the ongoing heavy rains that have arrived in the reign over the last 72 hours, which combined with the continued snow melt is making for the fast rising levels.
It has been another good week for Northwest communities in their work in reducing the impact of COVID, with Prince Rupert and a number of other communities across the region holding to zero cases for another week, while the remainder of the northwest has seen reduced counts as part of this weeks data review from the BC CDC.
Those still recording new cases, but in very low numbers included the Nechako region, Terrace and Smithers.
Across the remainder of the Northwest, those cases reported from May 23- May 29 were as follows.
Nechako -- 5 Terrace --2 Smithers --1
For the rest of the Northwest the totals are Zero with Kitimat,Haida Gwaii,Burns Lake, the Central Coast, Bella Coola Valley, Upper Skeena and Snow Country-Stikine-Telegraph. all noting that they have no cases to report.
The work on bending the curve of COVID in British Columbia continue to see some progress today, with the Wednesday update from Doctor Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix noting of the second day in a row of results below the 200 mark.
"We have had 194 new cases of COVID-19, including two epi-linked cases, for a total of 144,667 cases in British Columbia.
There are currently 2,662 active cases of COVID-19 in the province and a further 140,238 people who tested positive have recovered. Of the active cases, 246 individuals are currently hospitalized, 70 of whom are in intensive care. The remaining people are recovering at home in self-isolation.
There have been four new COVID-19 related deaths, for a total of 1,707 deaths in British Columbia. Our condolences are with the family, friends and caregivers of the people who have died as a result of COVID-19."
Across the various health authority's the results are as follows for the day: 33 are in the Vancouver Coastal Health region, 122 are in the Fraser Health region, two are in the Island Health region, and 33 are in the Interior Health region.
Four new cases of COVID were reported in the Northern Health region, the year to date total for the Northern region is now 7,689 cases since January of 2020.
There were no new cases of COVID reported by people in BC who reside outside of Canada.
When it comes to the provincial vaccination program, health officials are closing in on another benchmark for BC, expecting to reach the 3.5 million dose mark for first dose vaccinations sometime this week.
“Today, we are reporting that 71.1% of all adults in B.C. and 68% of those 12 and older have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. In total, 3,365,286 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in B.C., 208,145 of which are second doses. "
More notes on the vaccination program are anticipated as part of tomorrows in person briefing.
One of a number of drawings available on line featuring the proposed housing plans for McKay Street
Another solution to the affordable housing crisis in Prince Rupert is being revealed this week, with BC Housing introducing its plan to build new housing on the current site of the Harbour View Gardens on McKay Street.
In an update posted to the BC Housing website the process of replacing the now forty year old units on the site of what BC Housing calls Lot 1 is explained, which if taken on and completed as proposed would create 192 affordable rental townhomes and apartments.
A major improvement to housing along McKay street is in the planning stages
That would make for a significant upgrade in the available housing stock for that corridor which currently is home to jus over 100 housing units.
The additional housing would come through the placement of two apartment buildings of six and five storeys on the property to go along with a number of townhomes.
The timeline towards the project notes of current Tennant relocation sometime in 2022 with work on phase one to comment from 2022 to 2024. The goal is to have units available for those in the region as their turn comes up for relocation as the various phases of the project move forward.
As part of the process, BC Housing will be consulting with the neighbourhood before they approach the City of Prince Rupert with their Rezoning application, something that they anticipate doing moving into the summer.
In their documentation on the BC Housing website, the process of community engagement is outlined with a current tenants session set for tomorrow evening, with residents having been advised of the meeting towards the end of May.
While an Online Neighbourhood meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, June 8the from 6 to 7:30.
BC Housing will be hosting the session by Zoom.
To register contact the organizers at: michael@liveablecityplanning.com
While the planning gets underway for the newest housing proposal, one from last year along the Kootenay Avenue corridor not to far to the west has still to show any signs of progress.
The land has been cleared along Kootenay Avenue, but so far no work is underway to create replacement housing from those units torn down
Land was cleared in the early part of the year for the proposed housing along the north side of the avenue, though so far there has been no update as to when that project will get underway.
