By Sarah Stone

Top stories of 2014: Hwy 302 washout lasts months

Dec 29, 2014 | 6:13 AM

Our 3rd story of 2014 gave travellers of Highway 302 a headache—for months.

On May 3 a washout on Hwy 302 left a gaping hole on the side of the road that made it impassable for drivers.  This forced drivers along a detour 15 kilometres (kms) outside of city limits until October.

Joel Cherry, communications consultant with the ministry of highways and infrastructure, said washouts aren’t unheard of after a spring such as the one the province experienced.

“There was significant rainfall and precipitation in that area, as well as runoff and we had culvert failures all across the province this year.  There was really significant damage to culverts and bridges in southeastern Saskatchewan as well, for example.  There was a couple of other roads up in the Prince Albert area that washed out,” he explained.

With this in mind, he said a washout isn’t unheard of in a year with a lot of precipitation.

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“As soon as we knew the road was washing out, that there was damage to the road there, we closed it and we worked as quickly as we could with the R.M. to establish a detour around it,” he said.

The washout started with the road slumping road and quickly led to a full collapse almost the whole width of the road.   Cherry said although the Hwy 3 damage was fixed in a matter of weeks after its washout, Cherry said Hwy 302 had a series of unique circumstances that delayed the completion.

“This one was different because of geotechnical issues especially.  Like I said, the embankment there is 15 metres high, so just the geography of the area makes this sort of fix especially difficult.  The weather didn’t co-operate at all, we had to keep pumping water away from the area where we were doing the culvert install and whenever we started making some headway it would start raining again and we’d be back at square one,” he said.

At first the plan was to bore the culvert all the way through the embankment, a difficult task considering it was a 102-metre long culvert, he said.

Unfortunately, crews got halfway through boring and the machine that was pushing the culvert through broke down and the culvert got stuck.  This led crews to move a lot of dirt to get it through, and of course further delays.

By the time all was said and done, it was early October and a $1.3 million pricetag.

Originally the project was awarded for $900,000, but Cherry explained the brunt of the costs for the delays was shouldered by the contractor.

“We did have to spend another $300,000 … on what we paid the contractor on maintaining that detour because we did have to maintain it for a few months.  We had to keep it graded and everything because we wanted it to stay in the best condition possible and it was wet there,” he said.

Looking into the future Cherry doesn’t expect a similar situation happening because of the unusual weather that occurred this spring.  In addition, he said they did hydrology studies to ensure the area could withstand extreme precipitation.

At this point Cherry said he is unaware of any similar concerns to other areas along Hwy 302 where this could happen again.

To read more of our top stories of 2014, click here.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84