Meadowview action
Sturgeon County plans to move a road that’s just west of St. Albert in order to keep it from falling into the Sturgeon River – a move that sets a course for a fix for Meadowview Drive.Council voted last May 22 on a series of motions to fix and realign Range Road 261A and create detailed plans to rehabilitate Meadowview Drive. Both roads are near the Sandpiper Golf and Country Club on the north shore of Big Lake.
The county and St. Albert have for years been working on a solution for Meadowview Drive, a pothole-plagued road that has heavy traffic and speeding issues due to thousands of drivers using it as a shortcut into St. Albert. Council accepted a functional alignment study to fix the road in 2013 and put $1 million into this year’s capital budget to start work on detailed plans to implement it. RR 261A intersects Meadowview by the Sandpiper golf course and is part of that study.
County officials noticed that the Sturgeon was undermining the guardrail on RR 261A near Meadowview back in 2012, county capital projects officer Abid Malik told council. The undermining has since spread to a chunk of the actual road, so the county has called in a consultant to find a solution.
The plan is to spend up to $100,000 to shift part of this road about 1.7 m west away from the Sturgeon as a temporary fix and stabilize the riverbank, Malik said. Later, as part of the Meadowview Drive project, they’d push the road about 55 m further west.
The 2012 Meadowview study recommended realigning and widening the road (amongst other alterations) for about $24 million.
As administration recommended, council moved to instead have administration create detailed plans to rehabilitate Meadowview Drive from Hwy. 44 to RR 261A without widening or realigning it. Those plans, if approved, are projected to cost $12 million.
Area residents don’t want to see this road widened as that could worsen the speed and traffic problems here, said area Coun. Wayne Bokenfohr.
“A lot of the traffic right now is indirect traffic flow (due to) Ray Gibbon Drive being so blocked up,” he said in an interview. As part of the county’s annexation talks with St. Albert, the plan is for both governments to lobby the province to twin Ray Gibbon Dr. to reduce traffic on Meadowview.
Administration will now start work on the temporary fix for RR 261A and put out a request for proposals for the Meadowview Drive rehab project. Bokenfohr said in an interview that council would likely vote on one of those proposals this summer, with actual construction work starting next year.
Dlouhy Road
A long-time county resident and Pembina Pipeline gas-man now has a road to call his own.County council voted unanimously last May 22 to designate a 2.5 km stretch of Range Road 220 located south of Hwy. 643 and dead-ending at Twp. 560 as Dlouhy Road in recognition of former county resident Garry Dlouhy.
Dlouhy retired last April after 45 years as site manager for the Pembina Redwater gas processing facility in the southeast of the county, council heard. A company official asked the county if the stretch of road leading up to that facility could be named in Dlouhy’s honour.
Council heard how Dlouhy had helped the plant grow from a struggling site of maybe a dozen employees to a $3 billion operation employing hundreds. The plant is now the largest of its kind nationally and one of the county’s five biggest industrial taxpayers, said county economic development manager Tyler Westover.
“They are incredibly important to us, and this man was a big part of that development on site.”
Coun. Karen Shaw said in an interview that Dlouhy was a strong community supporter and the face of Pembina (which contributes significant funds each year to community groups and projects) at many local events.
Dlouhy, who for many years lived in Sturgeon County but now resides in Lamont County, thanked the county for its actions, noting that it had been a longtime supporter of his facility.
“You’ve kind of left me dumbfounded!” he said to council.
Council’s decision means that this stretch of road will now receive a new Dlouhy Road sign and be known by that name in addition to its official moniker of RR 220.
