Editor:
Re: “Evacuation order extended in Lower Rd. washout area,” Feb. 14.
When I lived near Whittaker Creek, I often wondered what the water course must have looked like before Lower Road got built. Hiking up the creek would take me past giant scattered sections of rusty culvert lying below the clay and gravel wall left by a collapsed slope. Out of the top of this rise peeked the surviving end of the Lower Road culvert, with water running both through it and underneath it to form a waterfall gradually eroding its way back toward the road.
It can’t have been news to either the SCRD or the Ministry of Transportation that further collapses were inevitable. A May 2006 technical memorandum prepared by Delcan for those authorities made note of the “major slope failure” in April 1997, which had detached the culvert outlet and been the subject of field observations by SCRD staff shortly thereafter. I sent the SCRD a photo myself in 2011, on the chance its institutional memory might need some refreshing.
I suppose freedom of conscience and belief means the ministry and regional district are free to believe this culvert-and-fill project of long ago won’t saturate and crumble what remains of the bank it rests on. But anyone driving a heavy vehicle might want to ask if there are secular reasons to have confidence in this stretch of road.
David Stow, Elphinstone
