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Service club wants fix to campground problems

Recent remediation work to a section of Black Diamond’s campground is not measuring up, according to the service club in charge of managing it.
The Foothills Lions Club will meet with engineer Urban Systems on Friday to address their concerns about poor water drainage in the northern portion of the Bob Lochhead
The Foothills Lions Club will meet with engineer Urban Systems on Friday to address their concerns about poor water drainage in the northern portion of the Bob Lochhead Memorial Campground in Black Diamond, as well as sewage smells and large rocks throughout the campground.

Recent remediation work to a section of Black Diamond’s campground is not measuring up, according to the service club in charge of managing it.

The Foothills Lion Club is asking that the Town of Black Diamond address issues that have emerged after the northern portion of Bob Lochhead Memorial Campground opened in May, including flooding campsites, smelly sewage and large rocks.

The campground, which is owned by the Town and operated by the Foothills Lions Club, lost land, buildings, trees, picnic tables and fire pits when the Sheep River swept through the campground during the 2013 flood. The Province allocated $1.132 million through the Disaster Recovery Program (DRP) to the now 52 full-service site campground to bring it to where it was previously – a process that’s been ongoing the past three years.

“The engineering should be to a specific standard and these issues shouldn’t exist,” said Barry Crane, president of the Foothills Lions Club. “Any DRP money that was allocated to rebuild the campground, we want to make sure all those dollars were spent accordingly.”

Crane said water hasn’t been draining out of the campground naturally and is pooling in some of the northern sites after a berm was built along the Sheep River on the campground’s west side.

“We had 12 more sites in that end (before the flood) and we never had a water issue,” said Crane. “One good hail storm can do a lot of damage in terms of flooding. If it rains for two days and you can’t get out of your trailer you are not going to stick around for an enjoyable experience.”

Gravel swales were built at the entrance of the sites to help drain water away last year, but Crane said they were so deep that trailers were hitting the parking pads. The club had the swales filled in with gravel.

With no place to drain following the exceptional amount of rain this summer, Crane said many of the northern sites flooded.

The Foothills Lions Club was also forced to move campers due to odours coming from a 30,000 gallon sewage tank installed in the north side, said Crane. It replaced a 3,000 gallon tank that was damaged in the flood.

Crane said club members installed a 13-foot-tall venting pipe to reduce the smell, but it hasn’t improved the situation.

“We are all baffled as to why they installed such a large tank when the campground shrunk by 10 sites,” he said. “We’ve had lots of complaints from campers, including long-term campers. It encompasses a 100 foot radius.”

Another problem Lions Club members are facing is the abundance of rocks. One windshield was broken and two vehicles dented when stones were thrown while mowing, Crane said.

To help alleviate the problem, several club members have been picking rocks from the green spaces - often times filling wheelbarrows, he said.

Aebig said DRP money funded the removal of rocks measuring five centimeters or more in diameter in the spring, but that the issue is expected to be ongoing for the campground.

“It’s a riverbed so over the winter rocks migrate to the surface,” she said.

The Foothills Lions Club and the Town’s engineer Urban Systems are scheduled to meet Friday to come up with solutions for the three problems, said project engineer Meghan Aebig.

“We are going to sit down and figure out what alternatives they are looking for,” she said, adding the solutions would likely not be covered under the DRP. “We had a contract that had specifications and drawings for the campground. We went through it with the town and the information was sent to the DRP for approval.”

Aebig said the contractors did the work according to the specifications, and if there is a deficiency with that work the contractor will be responsible.

“We will look at how the three items meet with the contractor’s requirements,” she said. “If it’s not related to the contractor it’s not the contractor’s responsibility.”

She said the engineers designed the sewer main and tank according to design standards for campgrounds, taking into consideration sewage flows from large recreational vehicles.

“We calculated how big the tank was according to those flows and according to the current standard for RVs,” she said. “We have it so that the tank needs to be cleaned out every two weeks.”

Crane said he looks forward to working with Urban Systems to come up with a solution to make the campground a more enjoyable experience for the campers, but he doesn’t want the community to have to pay for it.

“The Lions Club’s main concern is that the taxpayers don’t end up on the hook for any remediation that needs to continue to correct the deficiencies that we believe will be an ongoing concern in the future,” he said. “We want to supply the best camping experience for all visitors to showcase Black Diamond and the Diamond Valley to the best of our ability.”

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