Wheels Finally In Motion To Start Replacing The Horse Lake Bridge

Work to replace the Horse Lake Bridge in the South Cariboo is expected to start in the near future.

District of 100 Mile House Mayor Maureen Pinkney said they have chosen a contractor and the project should get going in the next couple of weeks.

“We’re going to start with removing some trees then after that it’s working on the environmental part of it and the installation of a temporary bridge.”

Pinkney said there are several stages to this replacement project.

“Once the temporary bridge is in place which is going to be a two-lane so we won’t be interrupting traffic too terribly much. It should have about the same weight load as what the current restricted bridge does, so we’ll still have to be mindful of the amount of traffic that’s going over it that’s very heavy and that will remain in place until the new one goes in which has a number of it’s own stages.”

With that in mind Pinkney said it could literally take until the end of next year if they run into any problems.

“When we have to dismantle the the old bridge it contains Fortis gas pipes, Hydro lines, our sewer lines. It is a known traditional territory sensitive area with our Tsqescen First Nation so should we uncover anything that will certainly put us all on hold until we look after all of that. Worry about the environmental of course, there are small white fish in that creek, and then replace with a new concrete and steel bridge,” Pinkney said.

The new bridge will last 100 years and be more environmental standard compared to what there is now with the old wood, there won’t be the maintenance of replacing boards every 10, 15 years, so it should be fairly maintenance free.

“It’s about $4.5 million,” Pinkney said, “We initially got a matching grant for what the initial bill was going to be on the bridge but it’s taken us a few years to get to this point with permitting and everything has gone up in price since. We did receive a bit of money from the Province and the Federal Government. We tried to go back and get them to top up to get to their 50-50 but that didn’t happen but we are glad for the grant that we did receive. And then there will be some extra bit of roadwork and sidewalking, the entire project will end up being about $6 million.”