SARM convention continues with focus on bridge maintenance

At day two of SARM’s midterm convention, rural municipalities discussed bridge funding, with projects costing $1M to $5M. Damian Smith reports.

The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) convention continued into Day 2 with a focus on bridge maintenance.

One of the concerns brought up was the lifeline of bridges in the province. SARM believes that 81 per cent of bridges in rural areas will need to be replaced within the next 10 years.

The association notes geography plays a factor but is not all to blame.

“A lot of municipalities have gone to low level crossings in the last number of years and large diameter culverts,” said Bill Huber, SARM president. “Inflation keeps affecting our cost of doing things, and bridges have become pretty expensive.”

There are more than 1,400 bridges across rural municipalities in the province.

The north end of Division 1, as well as all of Division 4, are the areas that SARM believes can improve the most in.

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Included in Division 4 is RM 457, the municipality of Connaught.

With a population of 492 people, the municipality has more than 40 bridges and 70 culverts, ranking second amongst municipalities in the province.

“We have the Carrot River, we have the Dog Hide, we have major water flowing through, just up of that northeast,” said Lloyd Seymour, the Reeve of Connaught. “We have a lot of maintenance and work at the end of the lifespan on a lot of our bridges.”

Even with the “Rural Integrated Roads for Growth”, where communities can receive up to $1 million for bridge and culvert projects, Seymour notes that the cost of these projects are not minimal.

Bridge number 42 in the area is due in three weeks from now, which is expected to cost $1.4 million after taxes.

“Some of this is red tape bureaucracy. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has gotten involved. So, we’ve had to build fishponds where there’s culverts,” Seymour said. “Some of the bureaucracy and the red tape has made our expenses go up exponentially.”