The first phase of Kimberley’s Mark Creek rehab did not fail during the extremely high water over the past week, says Mayor Ron McRae. In fact it performed exactly as it should, dispersing the high flow over a wider area and slowing the water down.
There has been a significant pile of gravel and rocks collected in the new phase, as high, fast water pushed them through the flume, but McRae says that when the water subsides the City will do some dredging.
“What is happening is part of the naturalizing of the creek,” McRae said. “Once it’s all said and done and the whole flume is replaced, you will see those kind of deposits when the water is high. But as you get all of the natural features in, the water would have slowed more.
“The first phase did exactly what is was supposed to do. The water coming out of the present flume was allowed to spread out and enter the rest of Mark Creek in a natural way.”
McRae says the new phase is in good shape.
“There has been a bit, I’m talking only centimetres, of natural settling and there is some material worn away between the larger rocks. Most of that was not high water in the creek but run off from the heavy rains pouring in. Once the water returns to normal, City crews will replace that material.”
The current heavy equipment sitting beside the creek was not brought in to shore up any failed areas, but for planned landscaping to finish the first phase.
“The crews are there to landscape the sides,” McRae said. “In terms of the first real high water to go through the new section, we passed the test.”
In fact, McRae said if the old part of the flume was still there, which was the area of most concern, it would have been quite likely to fail.
“We are seeing some degradation of the upper part of the concrete flume,” he said.