Emcon answers uproar after record snowfalls
By Kyra Hoggan
After a record snowfall in December, The Castlegar Source/Trail Champion received several phone calls from professional drivers, first responders and other area motorists expressing concern, and even outrage, over the condition of regional thoroughfares.
A reader poll posted to both sites asking “Do you feel Emcon (the regional road maintenance contractor) is doing a good job of clearing local roadways?” netted 15 ‘yes’ votes, 133 ‘no’ votes, one ‘I don’t know’, three ‘I don’t care’s and 24 said, ‘No, but I think expecting too much is unreasonable, given all this snow’.
Two similar questions on the Source’s FB page netted 49 and 34 responses, few of them complimentary.
Castlegar’s Andre Gauthier is professional truck driver who does both long and short hauls for Raymen Transport, and he said driving local highways, particularly after significant snowfall, means taking your life into your own hands.
“My normal run is to Vancouver and back – I usually do that two or three times a week,” said Gauthier, who has been driving professionally for almost a decade. “Out of everywhere I drive, Emcon territory is by far the worst.”
He said this winter has provided ample argument against privatization, and the government should once again take responsibility for wintertime road maintenance.
“It’s definitely gotten worse since privatization – Emcon may have stronger, newer trucks, but (the Ministry of) Highways had more employees and more plows with less distance to cover. They (Emcon) just don’t have the manpower or equipment to cover this area.”
He said, moreover, that top-drawer response to weather-diminished roadways often comes too late – after a fatal or serious accident has taken place. He also said that when truckers become fearful of road conditions, everyone should be nervous.
“A lot of people don’t realize the weight of these vehicles. Empty, my truck weighs 36,000 pounds, then loaded, it’s about 138,000 pounds. If we’re not safe going down a hill, no one on that hill is, either.”
He said the worst areas include the stretch from the bottom of Castlegar hill to College Creek (heading toward Grand Forks) as well as the Paulson Pass … and even in extreme weather, area covered by other contractors is in better condition.
“YRB (Yellowhead Road and Bridge contractor) territory starts in between Shore Acres and Glade, and when I drove to Nelson (before Christmas), it was like someone had drawn a line across the road. It was plowed and sanded and salted. The difference was night-and-day.”
Gauthier was only one of many offering negative feedback, but Emcon division manager Joe Mottishaw pointed out that even the most neutrally-worded poll question will more likely be answered by naysayers than those who are content with service (which this editor has found to be largely true), and that December snowfalls in Castlegar were some of the worst in history, with as much as 35 cm coming down in less than 24 hours.
“We got caught in very unusual conditions, with temperatures high during the day then dropping as low as -12 in the evening (they can’t salt the roadway surface unless it’s 6 degrees or higher),” he said. “It was a nightmare everywhere from here to Vancouver. Consecutive cold weather days don’t allow us to salt then remove (the resulting slush).”
He also said some of the complaints were, in his opinion, simple misunderstandings.
For example, he said the accusation made on Facebook that plows drive around with their blades up is belied by the upwards of $100,000/year he spends on new blades – but that sometimes the blade is up so a vehicle can salt or sand, which may cause misperceptions.
Another misapprehension, he said, is the notion that Emcon is accountable to no one but accountants.
“Every complaint is recorded as a PCR, or Public Communication Record,” he said, adding those records are regularly audited by the overseeing ministry – with upwards of 44 audits per year. “We get two major regional audits, and four major district audits a year, and then we do internal audits in between.”
He said any major snow event will see his 13 trucks along with 12 subcontractors for a total of 25 vehicles clearing roads.
“People aren’t happy because they’re looking for (roads that are) bare and black – that’s not the provincial standard. We throw everything we have at it,” he said, adding they do have to prioritize which roadways to do first and most often, number-one being school bus routes and main highways, then secondary highways like Broadwater and Pass Creek, then subdivisions, which have a variety of ranking criteria attached as well (for example the Oasis hill has to be done very quickly or it becomes impassable).
He said it’s not always as simple as it seems – they have to leave a window of time after salting before they plow, or only the top portion will melt and they’ll create a massive ice sheet. Leaving it too long may allow the resulting slush to freeze, creating the washboard effect which infuriates so many motorists.
Too much sand in the winter can lead to a rash of broken windshields in the summer, as well.
“I will use a football field of sand five metres (15 feet) high in a typical winter in just this area,” he said. “In the winter, I hear that I don’t use enough, in the summer, people are mad that I used too much.
“We’re in a thankless industry, we understand that. We’re not going to ever please everybody. I understand people’s frustrations, at times,” he said. “Here’s the thing – our families are on these roads, too. All of us – from our little ones to our young adults to ourselves to our parents. We’re all invested in safe roads.”
He also said drivers need to be aware that travelling local thoroughfares in winter conditions are a shared responsibility between maintenance crews and the motorists themselves.
“Speed limits are for ideal summer conditions – people need to drive according to the conditions,” he said.
He said he uses Twitter to communicate conditions to local drivers (follow him at @Emcon_Joe ).
Emcon recently received a five-year contract renewal for an area Mottishaw described as, “from one kilometer on the other side of the Brilliant Bridge toward Nelson, turning around at the dam lookout, over the Bombi to the Salmo cut-off (Meadows Junction) to Fruitvale to Trail and all the way up Trail hill to Rossland, then out Highway3B to Nancy Green Junction and back into Castlegar”.
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