Cottonwood Island Repairs Under Review
Prince George, B.C.- The assessment of work needed to repair damage that occurred at Cottonwood Island Park last year is underway.
“We have IFS (Industrial Forestry Service) doing a number of field work projects for us.” says City Parks Manager Sean LeBrun “They’re surveying bridges, surveying erosion control locations, testing the bank conditions, assessing the existing culverts that are on the Island to see what’s still effective, what’s not working, which ones need to be replaced. They’re also assessing danger trees close to the trails and gps-ing some potential new trails so we can reconnect the loop along the island.”
LeBrun says they are also looking at an alternate exit point on the west end of the island where a bridge was washed out.
Once the report is in, work will be begin on Cottonwood Island “not so much along the bank but reconstructing some of the trails, and doing some of the work that we can do right away.”
Some of the work that can be done right away includes maintenance on the trail that runs through the centre of the park “We know the trail through the middle is pretty solid and in decent condition, it just needs some rehab because its been several years since any work has been done there. We’re just talking about putting down some new granular material and working out on clearing back from the trail and building it up so it’s less susceptible to flooding and being washed out.”
LeBrun says the report will present some options on how to protect the river bank from further erosion “So what we’re anticipating is we’ll have a pretty good snapshot of how to move forward on how to protect Cottonwood Island, also, people want to be on the river, they don’t want to be in the middle of the island, the whole point is to be along the water.” How that might be achieved remains to be seen says LeBrun, “It could be a boardwalk, it could be elevated.”
He hopes the final report, including dollar estimates, will be ready by the end of this month, and then the focus will be on how to secure the capital funding to do some of the larger projects that will be needed.
Comments
This kind of work on Cottonwood Island is long overdue, however it is still nothing more than a band aid.
What we need to do is some major ballasting along the river bank from say Brink Forest Products to the CN Rail Bridge to stop or impede the erosion. In addition we might have to put up some cement walls to stop the erosion and allow people to access the river similar to the 9 kilometer seawall built in Stanley Park in Vancouver.
We need to seriously look at dredging the South side of the river so that it can return to its original course. We all know or should know that since they built the Kenney Dam and reduced the level of water in the Nechako that the river has been silting on the South side and as a result we now have the main course on the North side, hence the serious erosion taking place on the North side just East of the Winery.
Prince George likes to think that it is a big City, but when it comes to doing the right thing at the right time they seem unable to get it together.
Time to smarten up and start to do things correctly and preserve some of these places on the River, or eventually it will all be at the mouth of the Fraser in Vancouver.
I agree with everything said above. Cottonwood Island Park is one of the top tourist sites in the entire community. See here: https://www.tripadvisor.ca/Attractions-g154938-Activities-Prince_George_British_Columbia.html.
We need to do everything possible to make this park a success. One of the worst spots is the connector trail that leads to the Cameron Street bridge. It is in dangerous condition. Go to Kamloops or Kelowna and you would NEVER see a main/popular tourist attraction in this kind of poor shape.
Ya but doing any civil work might hurt the fishes and that is a no no, even though the work is only on a very small part of the whole river.
Farm it out to the “Experts” gee none of the many many people on the City payroll can figure it out, yeah right. Of course they could if there was an appetite for using the talent that already exists.
Using “experts” allows the politicians an out if something goes wrong.
metalman.
Maybe the experts can figure out how to prevent all the wood waste from Brinks mill from entering the river.
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