By: Wendy Stuek, Anna Mehler Paperny
Globe & Mail
August 2, 2008
Link to original article
PORTEAU COVE and VANCOUVER -- A series of small blasts have successfully chipped away at an unstable wall of rock above the Sea-to-Sky highway, making it likely that workers will soon be able to tackle the massive pile of boulders that has closed the route.
"We are hoping that we are going to get in there and get started moving the muck off the road pretty quickly," Brian Atkins, assistant district manager with the Transportation Ministry, said yesterday afternoon at Porteau Cove.
The highway has been impassable since late Tuesday, when about 16,000 cubic metres of rock crashed onto the route, renowned as both scenic and treacherous and in the midst of a nearly $800-million upgrade aimed at making it safer before the 2010 Olympic Games.
Officials now expect the route could be open as early as tomorrow evening, but emphasized the road has been severely damaged. The slide, the largest in a dozen years, has raised a host of questions about the safety and maintenance of the route.
Transportation Ministry spokesman Dave Crebo has said that portion of the highway is checked annually and the last inspection raised no "red flags" about its safety.
University of British Columbia geological engineer Erik Eberhardt said researchers are developing new ways to detect when a weakening plane of rock is about to shatter and plunge off a cliff, but they can be expensive.
For several thousand dollars, engineers can install global positioning receivers that monitor for tiny physical movements. For tens of thousands, emerging satellite technology would do sweeping scans of large areas such as the Sea-to-Sky highway and identify problematic spots. New microseismic sensors could "hear" the infinitesimal sounds of two rock planes moving against each other - similar to technology used to detect earthquakes, but on a far more minute level.
One Vancouver-based company thinks it has the microseismic technology the Sea-to-Sky highway needs.
Tex Enemark is communications director for Weir-Jones Group, which manufactures sensory devices to monitor sites such as rail beds for geological activity. He said the company's sensitive "geophones" can detect a shift between planes of rock a month before a slide occurs.
"There is noise emitted as the seal [between two planes] breaks, and once it starts ... it becomes more detectable and noisier, for want of a better phrase, so by monitoring this through a sophisticated electrical filter, you can tell when something is about to happen."
The system is pricey, however: Mr. Enemark said a sensor covering a 300-metre span of rock face would cost upward of $300,000.
The province yesterday announced a $12-million upgrade of the portion of Highway 99 that is north of Pemberton. Officials said the work had been planned for some time.
The landslide has not fazed a developer that plans to build a $200-million real estate project within a few kilometres of the slide site.
"Where we are building, we don't have any sizable cliffs that would be going near housing," Grant Murray, vice-president of sales with Vancouver-based developer Concord Pacific, said yesterday.
Concord, which has developed major housing projects in Vancouver and Toronto, has partnered with the Squamish Nation to build up to 1,400 homes near Porteau Cove. The upgrade of the highway made the project feasible and will add to its appeal once construction on the homes begins, likely by 2010, Mr. Murray said.
The improved highway will cut driving time from the development to Whistler to about 45 minutes, making it appealing to prospective buyers who want to be close to Vancouver and to Whistler, he said.
"We couldn't have asked for anything more than the money being spent to upgrade that highway."
