Andrea Markey
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (June 24/05) - Regulatory delays and changes to engineering plans have pushed the scheduled completion of the Deh Cho Bridge to fall 2008.

Members of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce were updated on the status of the bridge at their June lunch last week at the Explorer Hotel.

Michael Nadli, chief operating officer for the Deh Cho Bridge Corporation, walked the audience through the process up to this point.

"Concession agreements are 95 per cent done," he said. "By August, we want to have tendered major contracts, organized local contracts in order to award them in September and have received permits from the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board."

The Land and Water Board needs quarry permits before it will approve the project. The Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development requires the Bridge Corp. to pay a quarry royalty that shouldn't be required, said Andrew Gamble, project manager for the Bridge Corp., in a phone interview this week.

"The quarry royalty works out to be $1.50/cubic metre or approximately $300,000 for our needs," he said. "We see the bridge as a public partnership, supported by DIAND and GNWT."

The question of paying royalty will not stop the bridge from going ahead and will be worked out this summer, he said.

A more concrete delay in the bridge schedule is pier construction.

Eight piers need to be built to support the bridge. Project engineers felt the short ice-free summer months of one season are not enough time, Gamble said.

Four piers will be built from the north side of the river in the summer of 2006 and the remaining four in the summer of 2007.

"Our estimate for the cost of the bridge is still $60 million," he said. "By the end of August, when bids are in, we will have a price rather than an estimate."

Audience members at the Chamber lunch questioned the cost of the bridge, asking if the price takes into account the rising cost of steel and gas.

Ben Walker, general manager of the Yellowknife Co-op, is concerned about the potential for the toll price to increase in the future.

"Consumers will be paying a tax for basic goods to be brought into the North," he said.

"If ends don't meet and the cost of construction or maintaining the bridge is higher than expected, the consumer may be the one to make up the difference."

The cost of emergency freight for food and fuel this fall was $120,000, he said. The speculated bridge toll for commercial traffic is 02.75 a cent per pound. At that rate, the toll will be about even with the cost of coping with the fall freeze, he said.

"We need to be connected to the south 52 weeks of the year," Walker said. "But if the cost of the bridge escalates, the toll could be more and that gets passed on to the consumer."