The residents of Delta’s Westham Island have always been a tightly knit bunch, but recently, they have been seeing even more of each other than normal.
The 200-odd locals have been sharing shuttles — and news — ever since the lone bridge to the mainland was taken out of commission after being hit by a barge last week.
On Tuesday, the residents were taken to a townhall, hosted by TransLink, so they could learn more about the transit authority’s plans to fix the critical 116-year-old piece of infrastructure.
For many, the stakes were high.
“This afternoon, I was sitting in a meeting, and we were deciding whether or not we were going to farm this summer or not,” said resident Hugh Reynolds.
Westham Island is almost exclusively dedicated to agriculture, and with the bridge out of service, emergency efforts have been undertaken by the City of Delta to provide barge transport for farming equipment and produce.
TransLink says that with the scale of the damage now understood, they estimate it’ll take them a month to get things fixed.
“It will look like cranes on barges picking up a truss of the bridge, so it will lift that truss up and put it on a barge,” TransLink CEO Kevin Quinn said.
“That will give us the room and the space for our contractors to go in there and do some of the piledriving into the river bottom, and then lifting that truss back and putting it back on and having a stable foundation.”
The nature of the riverbed could cause some issues. It’s very silty and unstable, so that, combined with any potential poor weather, could delay the completion of repairs — something residents are hopeful can be avoided as planting season approaches.
“Without that bridge, there are no crops, there is no year,” said Reynolds.
“It’ll be tough for a month, and then we’ll have our bridge back, so that’s a huge relief.”
TransLink says it hopes to have crews working 24 hours a day, calling the repairs a top priority.
However, some say this issue was predictable, underscoring the need for a new bridge entirely.
“115 years of people driving one vehicle at a time on a single lane swing bridge that’s been repaired a million times,” said Delta South MLA AIan Paton.
“For crying out loud, we need to step up to the plate and build a proper two-lane bridge.”
TransLink says there are plans to build a new bridge, but they’re currently unfunded and likely several years away from being realized. So while residents do have a timeline, there’s no estimate yet for how much these repairs are going to cost.
