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Sinkhole fixed, issues remain

A sinkhole in Canmore that has sat without a solution for seven years has officially been fixed, but issues between municipal and provincial governments concerning the liability for undermining and who should pay to fix it, are not yet resolved.
This sinkhole opened up in 2010 and the Town of Canmore and the province of Alberta have disagreed over who is responsible for liability related to undermining on municipally
This sinkhole opened up in 2010 and the Town of Canmore and the province of Alberta have disagreed over who is responsible for liability related to undermining on municipally owned property.

A sinkhole in Canmore that has sat without a solution for seven years has officially been fixed, but issues between municipal and provincial governments concerning the liability for undermining and who should pay to fix it, are not yet resolved.

Town of Canmore manager of municipal infrastructure Michael Fark said Tuesday (July 25) the sinkhole located on municipal reserve land adjacent to Dyrgas Gate has been fixed.

“The update on the sinkhole is that it has now been remediated,” Fark said. “The work is essentially complete and there is landscaping and restoration that still needs to take place.”

The project was in front of council in April, as previous mitigation approaches were unsuccessful. The disagreement between the province and the municipality over who should pay to fix the hole caused delays. The mitigation has seen one false start, with a contractor on site in 2015 ready to fix the problem, when they realized the solution proposed would not work.

The scope council approved in spring was to conduct surface work to make the area safe for the public and wildlife and removal of the fence. It keeps the total overall amount spent within the $600,000 grant the province provided in 2013 to fix it.

The sinkhole formed along a pathway of municipal reserve land and was due to an airshaft that serviced mine seams No. 4 and No. 3 of the Number 4 mine. The airshaft was never located at the time of development approvals, and was mitigated by designating the area as municipal reserve.

The location of the airshaft became apparent in 2010 when the sinkhole opened up.

The issue of undermining has been ongoing in Canmore since Three Sisters Mountain Village was originally proposed and approved under the 1992 Natural Resources Conservation Board decision. Municipal officials and citizens in the community objected to approval of development on undermined land and the liability that would come with it.

As a result, in the late 1990s, the provincial government of the time created a number of regulations in the Municipal Government Act in relation to undermining and an agreement between the municipality, municipal affairs, treasury and finance was reached.

The agreement set out that the municipality and taxpayers would not be liable for risk related to development on undermined land. Until the Dyrgas Gate sinkhole, the liability regulation had not been tested by the Town of Canmore.

It turned out the province’s interpretation of the agreement is that only third party liability is covered – in other words, only private property. That meant the liability for risk for undermining on public land, according to the Province, falls to the Town of Canmore and its taxpayers.

Mayor John Borrowman has been lobbying the provincial government to address this issue for far longer than the seven years the sinkhole has sat unfixed in a busy residential neighbourhood.

The province released proposed changes to regulation of the MGA on Monday (July 24) this week, including a change to the Canmore undermining review regulation. The undermining exemption from liability regulation, on the other hand, has no changes proposed.

Borrowman said a recent conference call was held with Minister of Municipal Affairs Shaye Anderson and his staff to help them understand how Canmore is constrained by these regulations in ways no other community in Alberta is.

“The issue has been discussed at length in the community for a long time and pretty intensely when the (Three Sisters Mountain Village Resort Core area redevelopment plan) was before council,” said the mayor. “The Town, both administration and politically, we have had a number of conversations with the Province … with different ministers and different groups of bureaucrats, and our message has always been consistent: the Town is constrained in our land and development approval process by those regulations.”

Borrowman said changes proposed do not address concerns they have raised with the province, but he hopes to continue to lobby them to address these issues before the MGA changes are made.

Fark said administration would work directly with the team reviewing the regulation changes that were put out for public consultation last week. Through that process, he hopes to find a solution.

“We want to work with the province to see if we can get the regulations amended in a way that addresses our concern and that is the focus of moving forward,” he said.

Essentially, the NRCB decision granted development approvals on undermined land, which means that after subdivisions are completed, infrastructure such as roads, pipes, and pathways are going to become public assets. So the Town of Canmore has to accept undermined assets and has no choice in the matter, but is also liable for the undermining risk as well.

For Canmore’s mayor, the situation is a quandary that has left politicians and residents scratching their heads.

“Ultimately, the Town will end up owning infrastructure on undermined land if it is developed and that is where our primary concerns are. We need to have a much clearer voice in those decisions because we are going to be left holding the bag,” he said.

The draft regulations are out for review for 60 days. Other changes include the code of conduct for elected officials regulation, the determination of population regulation, intermunicipal collaboration framework regulation and off site levies regulation.

Go to www.mgareview.alberta.ca for more information.


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