Fairmont Debris Flow Mitigation
The Fairmont Flood & Landslide Service is in place within the community of Fairmont. Within the Service Area, the RDEK has debris flow mitigation infrastructure on both Fairmont Creek and Cold Spring Creek. This infrastructure is regularly inspected and maintained as needed.
After completing a multi-phase debris flow mitigation project on Fairmont Creek in 2018, debris flow mitigation on Cold Spring Creek was identified as a priority project by the RDEK Board in its 2019/2020 Strategic Plan.
As part of the early stages of the project, a Hazard Assessment was completed for Cold Spring Creek in fall of 2020, the results of which were shared with the community in October. In 2021, we completed a Risk Assessment (which is different from the hazard assessment in that it looks at the potential life safety, economic, and social impacts if the hazard was to materialize). A summary can be found in the Project Update section.
In 2021, the Cold Spring Creek Debris Flow Mitigation Project was awarded $9,723,000 in funding from the Adaptation, Resilience and Disaster Mitigation Program COVID-19 Resilience Infrastructure Stream (ARDM-CVRIS) which is part of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program. The purpose of the project is reduce the life loss risk due to debris flows on Cold Spring Creek. Engineering design was initiated in 2021 and construction is scheduled to begin in 2023 and be completed in 2024.
The prime engineering consultant for this project is McElhanney and they have partnered with BGC Engineering for the geotechnical and geohazard aspects of the project and Gygax Engineering for the structural components of the design. The design has been reviewed by an Independent Engineering Review Panel comprised of experts in this fairly specialized area of work. In December 2022, a Request for Pre-Qualification for Prime Contractor (RFPQ) was posted for this project. As a result of this process, four contractors were pre-qualified to bid on the project tender. The construction tender closed on May 4, 2023 and the construction contract award to MacKay Contracting was approved at the June 2023 Board Meeting.
Since the project was initiated in 2021, inflation has increased at unprecedented rates. The low bid for the construction tender was over the available budget for construction for this project. In order to have construction on the project proceed in 2023, some non-essential optional items were removed from the project, the team is in negotiations and consultation with MacKay Contracting to find cost savings and additional funding has been allocated to the project from the Fairmont Flood and Landslide Service Area and from the Growing Communities Fund.
There is a wealth of information on this page. For copies of project newsletters, inspection reports, technical reports and more, check out the Documents section. If you have a question about the project, take a read through the Q&A section below or ask a question using the Q&A tool or follow up with the contacts listed on this page.
For more information on Fairmont debris flow mitigation, please contact engineeringdept@rdek.bc.ca or 1-888-478-7335 in our Cranbrook RDEK office.