Crews will start construction soon on a new bridge spanning Cusheon Creek on Salt Spring’s Fulford-Ganges Road, according to provincial planning documents — and the island’s south-end residents can likely look forward to several weeks of new traffic disruptions as a result.
Final details are expected soon but early planning documents indicate the ministry means to replace the aging culvert beneath the roadway with a bridge — and while that’s being built, motorists can expect a temporary detour on a single-lane bridge on the downstream side of the roadway. The temporary bridge was seen arriving on-island via barge in June.
The project should “harden” a section of Salt Spring Island roadway that has been memorably vulnerable to severe weather in recent years. An atmospheric river event in November 2021 sent the water in the creek over two culverts and across Fulford-Ganges Road, just the latest among several big rainfall events that caused similar events over the last decade, according to a geotechnical report filed with the Ministry of Transportation and Transit (MoTT). The bridge site area is considered to have high potential for “outburst flood events,” leaving the road at Cusheon Creek quickly impassable.
The higher-capacity culvert put in after the 2021 washout was a temporary fix, according to Emcon Services’ South Island operations manager Andrew Gaetz, who said the new bridge project was bringing a much more “robust” solution while still aligning with the environmental importance of the waterway.
“There’s a lot going on there to protect the road, and help both the water — because a lot of people rely on it — and also the environment,” said Gaetz Friday, Aug. 8 when he and MoTT area manager Owen Page were on-island as guests of the ASK Salt Spring roundtable.
Gaetz said the project’s informational signs will likely be going up this week.
Cusheon Creek runs from Blackburn Lake to Cusheon Lake, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) said in a technical memorandum earlier this year they expected the culvert-to-bridge replacement would actually increase the amount of available wildlife habitat within the waterway. The new bridge is expected to have a six-metre-wide channel beneath it, resulting in a significant amount of potential fish habitat where previously there was just a narrow culvert and road fill, according to the memo.
Work held between now and mid-September creates the least risk for coho and chum salmon, DFO said, as well as coastal cutthroat trout in Cusheon Creek. The creek is expected to be temporarily isolated from fish passage within the project area for the duration of in-water construction activities, and sediment control measures will be in place.
The site, roughly 100 metres northeast of where Fulford-Ganges Road intersects with Horel Road, sees significant traffic, particularly in summer; a MoTT study of one week in August last year counted an average of 4,326 vehicles passing the project area every day.
Information will be posted at gov.bc.ca/saltspringislandprojects.