Town officials are still trying to fix the long-term stormwater drainage issue on the east side of town.
The majority of the drainage on Main Ave. East flows through an open drainage course on lots 920 Main Ave. East, 969 1st Ave. NE and 966 1st Ave. NE, said Ron Baker, the town's director of operations.
Town officials have received concerns from the property owners involved over the last five to six years, he said.
ìThe residents that have this creek running through their lots are concerned with the deleterious materials that flow off the highway and accumulate in the area,î he said.
Town officials anticipated the drainage issue would be fixed when the east side project to install water, wastewater and storm infrastructure was done, he said.
However, the east side project has been scaled back, he said, causing the drainage problem to remain.
ìThe original intent of the project was we were going to put streets and everything in there so we would have had a stormwater system installed as part of that, but the project got scaled back,î he said.
ìWe are only putting in water and waste water lines and we're just going to put the streets back the way they were,î he said, noting that the drainage will be back to how it was before they started.
During the council meeting on Feb. 4, council decided to write letters this month to Alberta Transportation, Alberta Health Services Environmental Public Health and Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resources, in regards to the issue.
After town officials receive a response, they will line up a project in working towards solving the issue, he said.
ìOnce we get the results of those letters then I think we will be more in a planning stage for what we want to do there,î he said.
A possible solution is to install a storm sewer line from Main Ave. to the entrance of Tall Timber, he explained.
However, this could cause other problems, he said, because the flow of the drainage would become confined to one outfall location.
ìThis solution will require much more investigation and is dependent upon the results of the BTEX testing,î he said.
A round of BTEX testing has been performed by collecting water samples from each affected property to test for hydrocarbon contamination and will be repeated in the spring, he explained.
