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Ice jam spurs "experts" into action (March 2008) By Wayne Mills, Member Representative & Herb Conat, Member Representative The bitter cold we used to have in years past hasn’t materialized and we are a balmy -12°C with a wind-chill of -22°C, not bad at all for this time of year. The big news in Prince George this winter was about the Nechako River and the ice jam that flooded out a number of residents and a couple of sawmills. One sawmill was forced to shut down early and will be staying shut down until mid-March because of poor lumber markets. Once the city built up River Road to stop the river from flooding over the bank and into town, the water started to percolate up through the ground and rise in the 1st Avenue light industrial area. It caused problems for a number of businesses. Fortunately, United Rentals is on the high end of the road. The staff stayed dry and kept busy renting out all the pumps they could find. Besides building up River Road, over two metres in some places, workers double-decked Gabion bags (wire mesh cages). The worst of the flooding came a few days before Christmas and kept going well into the new year. Just after New Year’s Day, the water came up quickly overnight until it was over the 200-year flood plain. This caught people off guard, especially the experts. The period between Christmas and New Year’s Day is a time when most of our contractors shut down, but that wasn’t the case this year with ICL. It picked up the biggest portion of the work from the city and kept more than 30 members working. The local helicopter outfits have been doing a lot of fly bys with all the “experts” and politicians. By mid-January, the powers that be had spent over $3 million trying to contain the mess. People have suggested a number of creative ways to break up the ice, such as: • build a 2.7 kilometre pipeline (construction time: two weeks, cost: $0.5 million) that will pump hot water from the pulp mills onto the ice • turn on the city wells to add more water to the river to raise the ice • use dynamite to blast out the ice jam • have the jets out of Cold Lake do a fly by and drop bombs • rent an amphibious excavator from somewhere in New Brunswick With the Fraser frozen at the mouth of the Nechako, the ice has nowhere to go so I would bet on Mother Nature cleaning it out before any of those other ideas bear fruit. Then the federal government should look at dredging the Nechako where it joins the Fraser. Twinning of the Simon Fraser Bridge has started with Sure Span being low bidder at $32.9 million. Western Industrial Contractors (WIC) and Fraser River Pile & Dredge’s joint venture was the lowest of our signatory contractors and they placed fifth by an additional $7 million. When the non-union bids beat our contractors, it doesn’t matter if we lose by $7.00 or $7 million. We still lose market share. We need to organize to get our share back and improve your pensions and benefits. Whether it be by organizing the unorganized or taking out the rats, we need your help. The only time that your Local Union is successful in this area is when the membership - you and your brothers and sisters - step forward and take an active part in organizing, rather than just talking about it after the fact. The new weigh scale south of Prince George at Red Rock is supposed to be let soon. By then, we’ll also know about the four-laning from the Simon Fraser Bridge to Sintich Road by then. These were part of the Cariboo Connector announcement made three years ago, in May of 2005. With luck, they will be finished in the spring of ’09. If not, the government will likely try to make more political hay by re-announcing the project. The paving industry will again be a big player for Operating Engineers in Prince George. Other jobs in connection with the bridge project are the airport expansion and the container reload. There is also talk about additional highway jobs and some civil work in Williams Lake. It may not be the billions of dollars of work that the transportation infrastructure plan in the Lower Mainland is going to create, but it will keep northern crews busy. Rumour has it that the government is looking at kicking in $50 million for highways and transportation infrastructure in the North. The weak lumber market is affecting our shops so we expect bargaining will be difficult this spring at Brandt Tractor, Williams Machinery and Coneco, and later this fall with the truck shops in Prince George. The District 4 and 5 Road Building Utility Agreement expires late this spring along with those of some independent road building and general construction companies in the North. The agreement with Billabong Road and Bridge, the highways maintenance contractor from Smithers to Stuart, was ratified in the middle of January. It was a “me too” agreement that went along with the rest of the provincial highways maintenance contracts. We also brought four more full-time people into that bargaining unit. Members at Kemess voted 94% in favour of a strike and rejected the company’s “settlement offer.” Mediation is underway. Issues include employee searches and surveillance which the company wants to continue unabated, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation which the company wants to ignore. There’s been little response to other concerns related to wages, off-site training, holidays, travel and RRSPs. Remember to think and act safely, not just when you are on the job but also around your house. Be careful. |
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