At an open house held in Oyama last Tuesday, residents were invited to look over and comment on the latest plans for the Highway 97 realignment between Winfield and Oyama.

Reid Drummond, regional project manager for the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, said the goal in planning the project was to achieve an outcome that will benefit the community as a whole while minimizing the impact to individuals within the community.

“We look at issues like property acquisition, noise level, disturbance to the environment and archaeological concerns and develop cost effective solutions,” said Drummond.

According to the ministry, the project will increase the highway’s carrying capacity, reduce delays, address safety concerns and allow a speed limit increase to 100 km/h.

Coun. Noreen Guenther was pleased with the overall design. She said it does a good job of mitigating concerns that residents of Lake Country have brought to her attention.

“Oyama has expressed a desire to remain rural and I think this is going to help facilitate that. I’m also happy to see that the model shows a minimal amount of cut and fills so that the views from the east side of the valley won’t be affected too much,” said Guenther.

Businesses in Oyama will no longer have the benefit of direct access to highway traffic, but Guenther said that the small number of businesses in the area are already modifying their business plans to remain viable.

She says that the municipality will be able to work with other levels of government to install signage to direct customers to businesses such as bed and breakfasts.

In previous discussions with the Ministry, Oyama resident Dean Nisbet, was troubled by the proximity of the proposed route to his home.

Earlier plans had shown the highway approximately nine metres from his back fence—one of the shortest setbacks along the entire route. Nisbet was smiling Tuesday night when he discovered that the plan had been altered slightly to double the highway’s distance from his property.

Work on the highway is slated to begin next year after the detailed designs have been completed.

Forrest Klotzbach of Urban Systems is the project engineer charged with designing the highway. He says the most challenging part of the project has been the topography.

The plan calls for the highway to run along the hillside to the west of the existing highway.

With Wood Lake on the east side and the mountains to the west, Klotzbach says keeping the grade of the corridor within an acceptable range is proving difficult and commented that “a fair bit” of blasting will be required.

The estimated completion time for the realignment is two and a half years.

The province is still in negotiations with landowners in the area to purchase the real estate needed to construct the realignment.

Bob Pratt, property acquisition coordinator said there are approximately 30 owners being affected.

“Money and real estate is involved but property acquisition is really a people business,” said Pratt. “That’s why we have these open houses. We might have all these experts working for us but we know that the best local knowledge comes from the community, so input is very important.”

Pratt said the property owners he deals with are paid not only for the land that the highway occupies but are also offered the opportunity to sell their holdings that are made inaccessible by the bisection of the highway through their land.

At the south end of the project the highway will tie into Highway 97 near the retaining wall just north of the intersection at Oceola Road. At the north end it will connect at Evans Road.

In Oyama, both north and south bound traffic have access to the highway.

An underpass at either end will provide access to the existing corridor along Wood Lake as well.

The cost of the realignment is budgeted at $77.9 million and is being shared by the provincial and federal governments.