A champagne reception unveiled the new Heffley Creek bridge last Thursday afternoon, a highly anticipated moment for the community located in the Northern tip of city limits.
“It’s been a longtime coming, as only Heffletonians could know,” community representative Deb McDougall told delegates, residents and media.
The $2.45-million span replaced infrastructure that washed away in May of last year during spring flooding. The bridge is located between the Heffley Creek Store and the community hall and its absence created a community divide for more than a year.
“There’s upper Heffley and lower Heffley, right?” resident Tibor Balogh, 60, told KTW. “Nobody thinks of it that way except for locals, but this is the first time it actually felt like a segregation. Because all of a sudden you have to come up or go around. It’s like you’ve got the Berlin Wall. All of a sudden, you’ve got one side and you’ve got the other side.”
Students from the north side of the bridge couldn’t walk to school on the south side of the bridge. Residents from the south faced an inconvenient detour to purchase items from the store. One resident even expressed frustration that Kamloops This Week’s newspaper box was on the wrong side of the bridge.
Heffley Creek resident Patti Bentley, 64, lives north of the bridge. She added 10 minutes onto each trip to her mailbox due to it being located on the other side.
“Even if I’m coming from town, if I wanted my mail I would have to stop there, go back, go all the way around to go home,” she said.
The Heffley Creek Store was inundated with questions from residents, visitors and skiers about the project.
“How long is this going to take to fix? How do we get around?” store manager Laurie Sallows said.
Delays to rebuild began almost immediately. First, there were the wildfires. Then, archeological work, with nine artifacts discovered in the area. The work also added $250,000 onto the capital project budget.
“We appreciate your patience,” Coun. Ray Dhaliwal told residents on Thursday.
McDougall, who is known as the unofficial mayor of Heffley Creek, said the community understands that unforeseen circumstances caused the delays. Residents were excited to welcome local traffic across the new bridge beginning Aug. 14.
One question McDougall still wants answered, however, is when the community will once again have clean drinking water. Heffley Creek has been on a boil-water advisory since the bridge washed out last spring.
“That’s over 466 days without potable water,” McDougall said.
While the community became part of the City of Kamloops in the 1970s, it has its own water system, the Heffley Creek Water Works District. A message on its answering machine notes the advisory until further notice. KTW has yet to hear back after leaving a message.
Meantime, weddings at the Heffley Creek Hall have been forced to bring in bottled water and residents continue to boil.
“I feel for the residents because that’s a long time to go without water,” McDougall said.