A former contractor who worked on the Sea-to-Sky Highway project says he’s concerned there are significant problems with more retaining walls built along the highway — including one near Eagleridge Bluffs in West Vancouver.
That’s prompted Claire Trevena, the NDP transportation and highways critic, to call for an independent audit of engineering on the highway.
But Minister of Transportation Todd Stone has dismissed the request, saying ministry staff have determined no further problems exist.
Mike Pearson, who worked as a blasting contractor on the project over five years ago, said he’s examined a retaining wall just east of Eagleridge Bluffs from below. “There’s great big bulges in there,” he said. “It’s amazingly wavy. It leans out and it leans in.”
Pearson said he believes the contractor built some retaining walls too fast, under pressure from the province to complete the highway in time for the 2010 Olympics.
“They went too fast and they built defects into it,” he said. “Rather than stop and repair it, they kept going.”
Pearson said he doesn’t believe the walls present any danger to the public.
“It’s not going to have a catastrophic problem. It’s not going to fall over,” he said. But he added, “It’s going to have a longevity problem.”
But the ministry of transportation says it’s already had independent engineers look at the Eagleridge retaining wall, who found there are no problems.
“There are no safety concerns whatsoever for the travelling public or for the residents along the Sea to Sky Highway — no safety issues,” said Stone, responding to
Trevena’s questions in the legislature recently.
Stone acknowledged two other retaining walls on the highway — one at Pasco Road north of Horseshoe Bay and one near Brandywine Falls — will have to be fixed by the contractor.
The ministry stated it has a routine inspection program where every wall is inspected every year.
Pearson said based on what he saw when he worked on the highway, he’s not convinced there will be no more problems, especially since the same contractor and suppliers were used for all the retaining walls.
Those concerns are shared by Jan Easton of Pasco Road, where residents are still talking to the ministry about how the repair work on the retaining wall there will be carried out this summer.
“There’s a good chance, I feel, this may have to be repeated on a larger scale,” he said.
Easton said most residents are hoping a lot of the work on Pasco Road will be done at night. Residents and ministry staff are still working on a schedule for the repairs — which will block the residents’ only access to their homes while it is carried out.
