Fuel abatement work planned
Lane’s Yukon Yardworks will spend the next three years working on the city’s fuel abatement efforts after council voted to award the $511,500 three-year contract for the work to the local company.
The vote also included a budget amendment that moved all the spending planned for the three years into 2019 in order to allow the contact to be awarded.
Fuel abatement work is planned for areas around the Copper Haul Road, near the Mount Sima pumphouse, McLean Lake Road, Riverdale South and Mary Lake/Cowley Creek.
Before council voted in favour of the contract award and budget change city staff confirmed the clear cutting portion of the work comes out to a cost of about $4,700 per hectare with the firesmarting work costing about $11,000 per hectare.
Staff also confirmed that much of the wood from the work would be available to the public to pick up for their own use. Some of the smaller pieces of wood will also be chipped by the city and used for compost.
Water main project contract awarded, budget changed
The city will be doing less and spending more than planned for a water main project downtown.
Council voted to alter the project and increase the budget from $450,000 to $650,000 for the waterman work planned in the areas of Lambert Street and Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
City engineer Taylor Eshpeter explained at an earlier council meeting an unknown, undocumented sanitary main was found behind the RCMP’s building on Fifth Avenue when city crews were working to find an alignment for the new water main.
It was also found a valve - planned for a connection to a fire hydrant - had been abandoned. The hydrant is connected to the water system on its other side.
That situation means the length of the waterman will have to increase to connect with the other hydrant on the east side of Lambert. That will increase the cost of the project.
At the same time the city won’t go ahead with the other water main extension planned on Fifth Avenue in order to look at ways to deal with that area.
City looks at fuel cleanup
With remediation work continuing on the north side of the McIntyre Creek pump house to clean up fuel that’s been found there, council has approved a budget change so $25,000 can be pulled from reserves as officials wait for funding approval from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
Work set for this year includes drilling and installation of four monitoring wells for sampling and water level monitoring.
“The completion of this project, (both the environmental site assessment and implementation of the resulting remediation options) will fulfill the city’s environmental obligations to the Yukon government environmental programs brand,” Geoff Quinsey, the city’s manager of water and waste services, stated in his report to council.
The city had budgeted $50,000 for the work with half of that anticipated coming from the FCM Green Fund.
FCM officials have indicated the city is likely to be approved for the funding, but it will take three to six months for that to happen.
The city thus opted to pull the $25,000 from reserves so the work can go ahead on schedule, and avoid a one-year delay. Should the FCM funding come through, the reserves would then be reimbursed.