County to replace culverts by school project

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

Wheatland County’s Infrastructure and Transportation Services General Manager, Dave Churchill, and his team stumbled across drainage problems and infrastructure replacement issues following various studies on the culverts just south of the Golden Hills School Division project.
The concern came up recently, years after the file was removed from the province’s bridge file list, when it was considered a non-issue and the County did not know the problems existed until the studies were conducted.
“The fact that it qualified as a bridge file was re-discovered while we were reviewing the design of the road and in order to accommodate the drainage we had our consultant check the flows and design a culvert that will handle the design flows,” said Churchill.
On Range Road 222, south of the East Wheatland School project, the culvert will be installed along with the reconstruction of the road, and be expanded from 1.2 metres to 1.6 metres in diameter to accommodate a better drainage system.
“That’s what caused the problem on that road all along with the drainage,” said Churchill.
Churchill does not expect weather conditions to play a role in the drainage issue, but said if there were changes in the weather patterns there could be an impact.
“I would say for the time of year and the type of year that we’re having, it won’t be an issue,” he said.
“Typically the issue would be in the spring. If we’ve had a really heavy snow fall and the snow all melts at the same time.”
He expects that the new culvert will be here in a month and installation will get underway shortly after its arrival.
The project will cost roughly $175,000.