By Adam Donnelly

Highway crashes threatening drinking water supply in North Thompson

Jan 14, 2019 | 4:20 PM

VAVENBY, BC — On December 30th, a transport truck went into the North Thompson River just south of Avola, rupturing its fuel tanks and spilling over 300 litres of fuel into the river. The incident prompted the TNRD to issue a “Do Not Use” order for residents downstream of the spill. This weekend, CFJC News went to a pair of communities to find out more about their concerns, and what they’d like to see done to prevent incidents like these from happening in the future.

The community of Vavenby gets all their water from this pump house on the North Thompson River. Just over two weeks ago, a transport truck went into the river and spilled 350 litres of diesel, leaving residents without potable tap water for six days.

“This time we were lucky, and the same with two years ago, we were lucky,” TNRD Area A Director and long-time Vavenby resident Carol Schaffer explained. “It was a diesel spill, and diesel floats… and it’s a long way from there to here. But we still have to take the precaution.”

Less than a week later, another truck went into the ditch north of Avola, also rupturing its full tanks. While none of that fuel made its way into the river, both incidents have raised concerns among residents who rely on the North Thompson for their water.

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“We’re not directly affected by this in Clearwater, but a lot of our residents are,” Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell said. “Farmers, ranchers up and down the valley. Pretty much everyone who uses Clearwater as a service area.”

Blackwell says the incident has highlighted some concerns on the quality of the highway maintenance in the area.

“Do we have the right highway safety contract here? Are maintenance levels being met, according to contract, or is it an issue with the contractor?” Blackwell said. “Somebody needs to look into that.”

The first incident took place just north of the Wire Cache Rest area. Just south of the rest-stop is the border between Area 20 which is maintained by Lakes District Maintenance, and area 15 which is under the care of Argo Road Maintenance. According to Blackwell, many of the complaints stem from different levels of maintenance between the two areas.

“There’s a concern that there are two different highway standards — one for south of that line and one for north of that line,” Blackwell explained. “It can be seen as a level-of-maintenance issue. Now whether or not that’s in the contract that way is a whole different issue.”

Schaffer says she’s concerned that next time a crash like this occurs, the consequences could be much worse.

“I’m scared of a tanker or a train with oil or bitumen… getting into our water system,” Schaffer said. “It’s going to happen one day if we don’t do something about it.”

Late this afternoon, the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure sent the following statement to our newsroom:

“B.C. has some of the highest maintenance standards in North America, and all of the ministry’s maintenance contracts use the same maintenance standards in all service areas, regardless of geography or elevation. Our standards are what is known as performance-based, which means the contractor must adhere to a performance measure depending on the class of highway. For example, snow accumulation cannot exceed 4 cm on a winter Class A highway. Both incidents occurred in Service Area 20.”

“As part of the highway maintenance contract re-tendering process, new contracts will have even higher maintenance standards.”