Drainage Improvements on Eimer's Road

Thanks to a grant from the Columbia Basin Trust Communities Initiatives and Affected Areas fund, the Nature Park Society has been able to hire a contractor to do some significant improvements to Eimer's Road. For decades, this major entrance to the Park has been plagued with seepage issues that created wet and muddy sections on the road. While this is irritating for hikers and bikers, it also keeps the road surface too soft to allow maintenance vehicles regular access to the area. Last winter, an extended period of cold weather without snow, allowed the seepage to spread and freeze across the road and made it almost impossible to walk into the park.

This week, local contractor Dave Sims, was hired by the KNPS to use his mini-excavator to build a ditch on the uphill side of the road and install 3 culverts to carry the seepage under the road to the creek. Dave did a great job in carefully constructing the ditch, spreading the excavated gravel on the road surface and smoothing everything out. Volunteer Roger Tierney, worked with the contractor and had great success in finding large rock to armour the catch basins around the culvert intakes.

Part way through the first day of work, we learned that the Nature Park was to be closed by the Fire Department at 1:00 pm on Saturday and we were grateful to the Fire Chief for allowing us to work through that deadline and into the evening. While more work remains to be done at a future date, the ditch and culverts were completed. We are now letting it all dry out and when access to the area is restored we will likely be doing some raking and shovelling to further smooth out the road surface.