It may look like a patchwork solution, thrown together just days after last year’s flood event on Cougar Creek, but municipal officials say they are not overly concerned about the culverts that sit beneath the CP Rail tracks.
Andy Esarte, manager of engineering for the Town of Canmore, said last week the work done along Cougar Creek for erosion control will also benefit the rail line’s infrastructure.
“If we control some of the sediment coming down on the fan and we control the erosion throughout the channel down to the Trans-Canada Highway, then the (CP) culverts have a much better chance of performing the way they are intended,” Esarte said. “I think you could make a strong case that the work the Town has done has significantly reduced what nature would bring down the channel.”
The Town of Canmore, with funding from the province, has put $14 million into mitigations on Cougar Creek over the past 11 months. The work includes a debris net upstream, which is designed to capture 20,000 cubic metres of sediment, and articulated concrete mats. The mats are designed to reduce erosion of the creek banks, while the channel of the creek has also been widened.
Esarte said CP deals with sediment at its culverts on an annual basis, as it is located on a fairly flat section of the channel.
“I’m not concerned,” he added. “I think CP has a long history of managing the tracks at Cougar Creek. They understand when weather forecasts could be problematic for them and they typically position equipment there and manage their tracks.
“The impact of the CP culverts upstream is fairly minimal on the Town of Canmore, so really the risk there is managing the train traffic at times when there could be issues for the tracks.”
Esarte said the municipality is working with stakeholders along the creek to find long-term solutions and that includes CP Rail. He said the long-term goal is to see less people operating heavy machinery in the creek during rain events.
“It is labour intensive and also to a certain extent it is dangerous,” he said. “The more you can minimize crews working in these creeks during events (the better). The behaviour of these creeks is really unpredictable and so keeping crews and equipment back from the creeks is a priority for us and I think that is a priority for CP.”
Minister of Jobs, Skills and Training Kyle Fawcett said when it comes to full mitigation of the mountain creek and working with stakeholders like CP, it is going to take time.
“Some of these solutions will be a much longer term conversation and department of transportation minister (Wayne) Drysdale will have to have those conversations with CP,” Fawcett said. “We are going to continue that dialogue with them and it is not just here on Cougar Creek, but in Exshaw along Exshaw Creek as well.”
He noted because railways are federally regulated in Canada, the federal government has a role to play in long-term conversations as well. Fawcett said there is a lot more work to do and he expects it to be a five- to 10-year process – not a 10-month one.
“We have always maintained we wouldn’t be able to do everything that we needed to do this year and we have been very up front and honest with that with people,” he said. “We can also take solace in the fact that last year’s event was an extreme event and we are not anticipating we are going to see that kind of extreme event this time around. But what we have done is everything in our power to prepare for it if it does happen.”
Mayor John Borrowman echoed the work on Cougar Creek done in the past year was intended to be the best Canmore could put in place to prepare for 2014 and some of the work, like the concrete mats, will form part of the long-term mitigation.
“All the work we are doing on Cougar Creek protects all the infrastructure downstream like the Trans-Canada Highway and the rail line,” Borrowman said. “With the reduction of the amount of debris in the water flow, the CP Rail lines are not as worrisome as they were last year.”
Borrowman added the array of culverts under the track may “seem” like a minor fix, but the good news is that CP is at the table when it comes to long-term mitigations and that includes the potential for funding.
CP also contributed funds for the $600,000 hazard and risk assessment of Cougar Creek, which is expected to help identify potential long-term mitigations for the waterway.
