The city will ask the owners of the abandoned Jack Pine Forests Products site at 4105 Frizzi Road to control surface water flow from the mill yard that is suspected to be contributing to instability of the river valley escarpment.
At a special meeting June 25, council received the recommendation from engineering technologist Jeff Bernardy.
“A series of landslides have occurred along the river valley escarpment in the near vicinity,” Bernardy noted.
In 2002, 2009, and 2012 slope failures occurred in the vicinity, causing damage to the city’s sewer infrastructure, loss of the mill yard and damage to the city drainage.
In June slope failure has continued, with the most recent events happening June 22 and June 26 after the city was hit with torrential rainfalls that dumped a huge amount of rain in a very short amount of time.
The June 22 resulted in some of the escarpment slipping down, but on June 26, a larger portion slid right down into the Williams Lake Creek.
Council will request that a diversion berm system be installed on Jackpine lands and tied into the city storm system.
If the action is not taken by the owner by 4:30 p.m. July 4, 2013 staff will hire a contractor to complete the work.
The recovery of these costs would be from the owner or the sale of the property as specified in section 80 of the Community Charter.