'Garbage bumps' from old landfill plague South Fraser Perimeter Road
Credit to Author: Rob Shaw| Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2019 18:10:24 +0000
VICTORIA — B.C.’s transportation ministry is sinking millions of dollars worth of repairs into a sinking section of the South Fraser Perimeter Road — less than six years after the billion-dollar highway opened to traffic.
A section of Highway 17 in Delta, built over a landfill, has started to deform. Emergency repairs to the so-called “garbage bumps” will cost the province more than $3 million.
The stretch of road, just west of 96th Street and the Alex Fraser Bridge, has been steadily sinking and contorting in spots to form a sharp series of mounds that can cause vehicles to bounce precariously while travelling at the posted speed limit of 80 kph.
“When you say bump, it’s not just a bump — people think a speed bump, but it’s more like a take-off spot,” said NDP MLA Ravi Kahlon, whose Delta South riding encompasses the problem spot.
“My son is the only one I know who likes it because he likes to fly. Literally, he’s like, ‘Dad why are you slowing down? Go faster so the car can jump up a couple feet … he thinks it’s like a rollercoaster ride.”
It’s also a serious problem, Kahlon added.
“It’s scary,” he said. “You actually get air time if you are going 60 kph.
“It’s a really dangerous situation especially because that road is built for industrial traffic, so you’ve got these big trucks hauling at 80 to 90 kph and all of a sudden have to hit their brakes because they are going to hit these bumps,” he said.
The provincial transportation ministry installed new warning signs in April. Nine months ago, it spent $600,000 to grind down the bumps and repave them in an attempt to keep that portion of the highway operational.
“You can’t do nothing, the whole road would be shut down,” said Kahlon.
But those are only “interim fixes,” as the ministry called them in a statement to Postmedia. The province anticipates having to grind and repave this stretch of the South Fraser Perimeter Road annually for up to five years at a total cost of more than $3.6 million.
“We expect the area to continue slowly settling for another three to five years, and once it is stabilized, then staff can establish a permanent solution,” the ministry said in a statement.
The South Fraser Perimeter Road was built in stages but opened fully in December 2013 as a four-lane highway that linked Tsawwassen to Highway 1 at the Port Mann Bridge. It was billed as critical to improving access to port and industrial lands, as well as better connecting the Trans-Canada Highway. It also went over its $1-billion budget, with the final bill totalling $1.264 billion.
The project was not without criticism, especially for the route selected and its encroachment on Burns Bog and agricultural lands.
However, the City of Delta was a particularly enthusiastic supporter because the highway helped remediate five landfill sites. The largest landfill in the area — the former Delta Shake and Shingle site that was the site of a major fire in 1999 that prompted Delta to declare a state of emergency — was rehabilitated and turned into the part of the South Fraser Perimeter Road that is roughly now the location of the growing bumps.
At the time in 2013, the then-Liberal government issued a media release titled: “South Fraser Perimeter Road turns trash to treasure.” Delta said the highway would remove 20,000 cubic metres of leechate out of the environment annually and divert 20,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases.
Delta spokesperson Dammy Ogunseitan said municipal staff “haven’t had any comments from residents” on the highway bumps because they all go to the province.
The government said the issue is related to “soft soils, not pH levels” and it is not unusual to have what it calls “post-construction settlement.”
“Some of this settlement was anticipated as the project had geotechnical challenges with the soil composition along the corridor,” the ministry said in its statement. “As such, the infrastructure was designed to mitigate any settlement issues as much as possible.”
Kahlon said his constituents ask him if the garbage bumps are because the previous Liberal government ignored engineering advice to save costs.
“I call it the B.C. Liberals’ garbage bumps,” he said. “People come and say, ‘What’s happening with it? How come nobody is fixing it?’ And when you tell them we’re paying $650,000 every year and spending that for at least another three to five years, people are like, ‘What the heck was this government thinking when they built this?’
“It raises the question: Did they know this would happen, and if they did why didn’t they tell them? I suspect they were afraid of cost overruns.”
For now, the community is stuck with temporary fixes. But that’s not good enough for the long-term, said Kahlon.
“I know they just finished paving it a few months ago, but it’s hard to tell because it keeps sinking,” he said. “You can’t keep paving over mistakes.”