The City of Kamloops will be building another emergency access route from Juniper Ridge this year.
Council has voted to have a road built from Juniper East off of Kicking Horse Drive, which will go past a gravel pit and down the hill, to connect with the east end of Valleyview Drive.
City manager David Trawin said this comes after another emergency access road was upgraded last month at the top of Juniper, with a gated road between Coldwater Drive and High Canada Place in Rose Hill. The cost for those upgrades was $50,000.
“It was there before, but they’ve widened it out, they’ve put millings down on it. So it’s available for a greater variety of vehicles and it’s safer to use under all conditions. Which was important, whether it be at night, whether it be under smoke conditions. So that’s all been done.”
The budget for the new gated emergency road through Juniper East is $400,000. Once permits are approved, the city said there is a 30-day turnaround to build it.
Mayor Ken Christian said Kamloops Fire Rescue crews at Hall Three, in Valleyview, will have access for opening and closing the locked gates on emergency routes, should they need to be used again.
“I did canvass that with the Juniper Ridge Community Association when I met with them… The concern as it was expressed to me, is that these lands are not for people to kind of be wandering through. And that you want to control the access fairly critically. Because you could, in fact, increase the fire risk,” Christian said.
Council approved that spending Tuesday, as well as other spending that has come as a result of the Canada Day fire and evacuations in Juniper Ridge, during which it took most residents well over an hour to drive 2.5 kilometres down Highland Road because of congestion.
Apart from funding for the two emergency roads, totalling $450,000, council has approved transferring reserves funds to cover costs already incurred for the initial setup with the Voyent Alert app, of $40,000, and costs for trauma support sessions for people in Juniper, of $2,720.
Council has also added $3,500 to its annual operating budget to maintain the emergency routes.
City staff had also asked council to approve adding $15,000 to its annual budget to pay the licensing fees of Voyent Alert, but councillors decided to first look into whether there’s other software programs the city could subscribe to instead. A report is expected to come back to council at the August 31 meeting.
Meanwhile, with two new emergency routes out of Juniper coming online this year, Trawin reiterated that the city is expediting its plan to build a permanent road between Qu’Appelle Boulevard and Rose Hill Road, in Juniper West.
“We are looking at grant funding. One of the issues is there’s a big grant program coming out, so we feel we may be able to take advantage of that for the extension of Qu’Appelle on that, as well as potential upgrades we may need to do for Rose Hill Road, once Qu’Appelle goes through as a full open road.”
Under the grant program Trawin mentioned, the city could receive at least $1 million for the new road project, and it has until Nov. 15 to apply for funding.
