Masset potholes are getting nervous.
Starting this June to September and continuing June to September next year, the Village of Masset will repave 38 streets — nearly every street in town.
Masset councillors voted to award the $8.1-million paving project to Terus Construction at a meeting last Monday.
“The village has been working toward this for more than a decade,” said Councillor Barry Pages, who chaired the meeting in the absence of Mayor Sheri Disney.
“It’s long overdue.”
Pages said most of the asphalt in Masset is at least 65 years old, and anyone can see it badly needs repair.
One priority is the armadillo-sized bump at the northeast corner of Main and Collison, Masset’s main intersection, where a storm drain is raised high above several potholes. Partly to keep costs down, public works staff will do some preparatory work at that spot and other areas ahead of the Terus Construction crew.
Pages said village staff will share a map and a timeline of the paving project once the contract is signed.
Staff from the village and Terus Construction met last Friday with local business owners, emergency responders, and other stakeholders to talk about how to manage access to buildings when the paving work gets underway.
Before it could repave the streets, the Village of Masset had to replace many asbestos-lined watermains buried below them. Much of that work was completed in 2017 and 2018, but the village will spend about $3 million more this winter to replace the last of the old asbestos-lined watermains.
Pages said funding for the paving project and the final watermains replacement was secured in large part because of the Northwest BC Resource Benefits Alliance, a group of 21 local governments in northwest B.C. between Masset and Vanderhoof. The alliance recently signed a $250-million, five-year infrastructure funding deal that will see the local governments receive a share of the provincial tax revenues from large industrial projects in northwest B.C., such as LNG Canada, the Blackwater Gold Project, the Ridley Island Energy Export Facility, the Fairview Container Terminal Expansion, and the Banks Island North Wind Energy Project.
Pages said the $8.1-million paving and $3-million water mains projects are big projects for Masset but said it’s far more cost effective to do a single large project at once rather than a series of smaller ones.
Councillor Terry Carty noted that the village also has more borrowing room to finance the project now that it is nearly finished paying for its share of the 2008 construction costs for the Northern Haida Gwaii Hospital and Health Centre.
Masset councillors also voted to award an estimated $24,944 contract to Rob Shearer, an engineering technologist, to assist the village public works staff in overseeing quality control of the paving project.
Terus Construction, a group of companies, is better known locally for its subsidiary, Adventure Construction, which operates an asphalt plant and aggregate site in Masset.