By Greg Higgins

Council suggests weight limit of back alley to prevent annual fix

Sep 13, 2016 | 12:00 PM

Every summer garbage trucks drive down it, every year the road cracks and every year the city has to fix it.

The alleyway behind the apartments on St. Laurent Dr. are where the residents park. It’s also where the garbage trucks make pickups. According to Stewart Schafer, North Battleford’s public works director, he gets complaints every year about the damage caused to the road. He said the issue isn’t so much the cost to the city to fix the road, but the inconvenience.

“I get people every year screaming to me every spring to fix it and I have to tell them to wait until August,” Schafer said. “You can see the alley can’t take the weight of the heavier vehicles. I think it is time to implement a weight restriction as a possible solution to the problem.”

The main problem a weight restriction would cause is the use of smaller garbage trucks. Loraas is the primary waste management company used in the city. According to a representative from Loraas, the company does not have smaller trucks in its fleet. Schafer said he’d be more than willing to work with Loraas and other waste management companies on a solution.

Schafer said he would like the weight restriction to start next year and run from March through July. He said the alley can’t be fixed until August because the crust needs to dry and reform. If they attempted to fix it any earlier the machinery would actually cause more damage.

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Schafer said this is an isolated issue and doesn’t happen anywhere else in the city to the same extent.

Greg Higgins is battlefordsNOW’s city municipal affairs and health reporter. He can be reached at ghiggins@jpbg.ca or tweet him @realgreghiggins.