The volume of rain that has pounded St. Albert and much of the Capital region so far this summer has caused only minor delays in the city’s capital projects, according to managers there.
Sue Howard, the city’s capital projects manager, said work is still continuing as planned and any delays so far due to weather will be relatively minor.
“We’re seeing a one to two week delay in some areas,” said Howard. “All projects are still anticipated to be completed this year.”
Howard is not expecting this summer to be anywhere as troublesome as last year, when the number of rainout days made finishing some of the city’s capital projects very difficult. In the end the city was unable to finish two major projects as planned – the rebuild of Mission Avenue and the third stage of Ray Gibbon Drive.
“It’s nowhere near (last year),” Howard said. “There’s no concern of projects not getting completed because of the rain we’ve received today.”
Work resumed on Mission Avenue when the school year ended, Howard said. It has now been closed to traffic and work on the incomplete second phase has begun.
The rain has also set back some of the seeding in Riel where the rugby and football fields are being re-seeded after being stripped last year.
“We couldn’t do all the seeding on some of the soccer fields but we got the majority of it done before the rains came,” said Howard.
Larry Galye, project manager for Ray Gibbon Drive, said the rain has caused some delays, again in the neighbourood of a couple of weeks, but that crews have been able to get a good amount of work done.
“I don’t think it’s anything too great,” said Galye. “We had anticipated completion by early August but now we’re probably looking at mid to late August just because of the rain.”
Galye said about two-thirds of the asphalt has been laid on phase three of Ray Gibbon Drive. Remaining is the final third of the road, work at the intersections at Giroux and Villeneuve Road, as well as landscaping.
Galye said the landscaping is proving to be the most difficult because of the rain. They’ve been trying to landscape a storm pond and have been pumping out the water to do so.
“Every time we drain it down to a reasonable level, it rains again,” Galye said.
Galye is also supervising the installation of new signs at primary and secondary entrances to the city. He said the rain has also disrupted some of that work, as the signs are built in place instead of being pre-fabricated and simply installed.
“The weather’s been hampering them as well,” Galye said.
