The provincial government has confirmed it will provide half a million dollars in provincial disaster assistance to address the slumping issues at the Battleford Cemetery.
Battleford town council received the news from the province at their meeting Monday night. In correspondence from Tamie Folwark, customer service and program director with the Provincial Disaster Assistance Program, it was confirmed that approval has been given to the Town of Battleford to use the estimated $500,000 for "relocating the existing burial sites or towards the other two recommended fix options presented by the engineer."
The cemetery is located near the Highway 16 and Highway 4 interchange in Battleford. The slumping issues at that location have been a concern of civic officials for some time, with worries that up to 80 graves could be affected there.
There were two geotechnical engineering reports done on the issue. The first of those reports was from P. Machibroda Engineering Ltd., who, according to Mayor Derek Mahon, was taken on by the Town to do a study on the issues at the cemetery.
Mahon said that report was sent in to the Ministry of Government Relations to see what help they could provide.
PDAP then sent out a consultant from Golder Associates Ltd. to review the situation, and they came to the same conclusion. According to the correspondence from Folwark, the "conclusion was unanimous that the June 2013 rain event caused the current tension cracks and downslope movement."
"The rain event caused the sliding and movement on the river side of the cemetery, the northwest side," Mahon told reporters.
The funding from PDAP is to "put it back to its original condition," Mahon said. It would not cover remediation options that did not exist prior to the disaster event.
A couple of remediation options had been proposed by P. Machibroda Engineering Ltd., one of which cost $1.37 million and the other $1.48 million, but the PDAP program would not be able to fund those particular amounts, Mahon noted.
PDAP could have funded remediation efforts that took place before the event, but not after. Still, the mayor seemed satisfied with the amount of money provided by PDAP and the reasoning that went into it.
Mahon said there will be meetings set up to come up with a plan to address the situation with the cemetery.
"The difference between what they (PDAP) will fund and what's proposed for the slope stability is a great deal more money, so I'm thinking at this point in time that we would probably use the $500,000 to address the situation and that would be the dollars that would be spent," said Mahon to reporters.
Families will be consulted as well on the situation at the cemetery and what will happen next.
"It's very important we take a sensitive approach to this," said Mahon. "This is something municipalities don't encounter every day, so I think it's going to take us a little bit of time to work through this and we hope the people will work with us as well."
