Culverts?

Things seem to have dried up fairly well and some maintenance to the roads is underway. In my last post I mentioned that the Highways dept. has turned down request for culverts for this area??????? Now I want to show you a culvert on the Bells Lake Road.

If you have been following this blog, you will have seen some pictures of Bells Lake road in my Apr 15 post. The following pictures and comments relate to this area.

After the wash out and flooding the highways group put down some decent gravel and did a fairly nice job, particularly in relation to the previous years repair (?).




Take a look at the picture above. What you see is a damaged culvert. Do you think that this had anything to do with the flooding? Although it is not evident in the photo, the broken piece is laying in the mud.


You get a better idea what the catchment area looks like in this photo. Also note the angles of the 2 culverts. Hmmmmm!

In this photo, the other side of the road, the culverts are some what parallel although they do not appear to be the same hight. Is this an engineering decision? Also if the culverts are parallel on this side of the road and not so on the other side what does that tell you?



Now take a look at this rather blown out photo of the current running out of the culverts. The one on the right is moving a fair volume of water while the one on the left is moving very little. What does that tell you?

This should be an alert that the culverts and the catchment area's on these and ALL other culverts need to be attended to. I would suggest in a month or two would be ideal times as the water level should be at it's lowest. BEFORE WINTER PLEASE.

I have mentioned before that it appears that there is not a maintenance plan in place. It would be nice if I am wrong but it appears that I nor others will never know. It is absolutely amazing what a little communications can do. Let us know, Highways, what you are doing and what you plan for the year. We have a number of print media that I'm sure would be happy to print such information.

Until next time

In the scheme of things

On a recent trip to Kamloops there was a lot of construction on 97. Fortunately there were few delays as I had an early start. Even if there was I would not have been put off as we really need improvements on that highway.

On the other had I have been told that the local highways crew requested a number of culverts (see my last post) and were turned down flatly. Now when you take a look at the number of culverts in this area and in particular the large number of damaged ones, it becomes a concern. The question begs: why do we have damaged culverts in the first place?

I suppose that when you look at the big picture, highway 97, gravel roads in the Horsefly area, who do you think is going to win! As the rancher would say: it looks like we are going to have to continue to suck the hind teat. Maybe if everyone contributed to fixing up the road in front of and along there property line, then maybe we would get some good roads to drive on??

As an after thought, I just had to have some work done on my car's front end, a 2008. As I said to the service rep, these cars were not designed to be driven continually on or roads. He agreed. I guess it's back to the fuel gobbling truck.

In the scheme things I guess we are insignificant.