Upgrade delayed by archeological finds

Posted by admin on Jan 23, 2008 in News | 0 comments

Delays in construction are nothing new to Trinity Western University, as is the case with the water line that will connect TWU to the Township of Langley’s water supply.

The majority of the project is complete, but it ran into various obstacles that prevented it from reaching the originally projected finish of late Oct. 2007, according to director of Campus Services Paul Johnston.

The most significant aspect was discovering a First Nations archeological site in McMillan Park, located on Glover Road between the TWU entrance and the train tracks.

“The Township [was not] actually digging in the archeological site, but because the other land surrounding the site had not been thoroughly excavated to see if there were any artifacts in there, it obviously raised some flags with the Ministry [of Archeology],” said Johnston.

These “flags” led to an investigation of the land.

“The problem for us is that there are no legal maps… that gave any indication of there being any archeological site there in the first place,” he said.

Construction ceased for two weeks as the Township of Langley had to apply for permits from the Ministry, as well as working with the Kwantlen First Nations group.

“[Both groups] were absolutely fabulous and treated us really well,” said Johnston. “They did nothing but help expedite the process so that the project wouldn’t be held up any longer than it had to.”

While this development delayed the construction, another factor had to do with the performance of Directional Mining & Drilling (DM&D), the project’s contractor.

“To be quite honest, the reason why it has taken longer than it should have is due to the contractor basically not pulling through for us,” said Johnston. “That has been a frustration for us, for our engineers, and it’s been a huge frustration for the Township of Langley.”

Another upset was caused by DM&D when the contractor hit a gas line last semester. Glover Road was shut down while British Columbia fuel company Terasen Gas repaired the damage, according to Johnston. TWU’s gas supply was shut off for that time.

“Thankfully, it did not have a major impact on our community,” said Johnston, “but [it] was an absolute nightmare for our maintenance staff as they had to come back onto campus and physically restart every single gas boiler, heat pump and HVAC unit,” said Johnston.

Despite the delays, Johnston says the connection should be completed by the end of January.