Dawson council at Feb 17 meeting; Byrun Shandler, Glen Everitt, Joanne Van Nostrand, Bill Holmes and city manager Scott Coulson. Photo by Dan Davidson.

Council's Fears Addressed by Premier

by Dan Davidson

Dawson's council has been of two minds about a bridge across the Yukon River for some time, but there was general agreement that premier Fentie's meetings with them on February 16 and with the community that same night, did appear to mean that a bridge announcement was imminent.

"I expect a full announcement in about three weeks," said Mayor Glen Everitt the next evening.

"Yesterday when we met with the premier we indicated that the council basically wanted to know at what expense we would get a bridge.

"Not dollar-wise, but meaning that there are other important items for this community, such as a home for Yukon College, a medical center,water and sewer, writing off the debt ..."

Council's concern, expressed a number of times over the last few months, has been that a major project like a bridge would be viewed as a goodie for Dawson, and that other needed spending would then be brushed off, with the amount spent on the bridge as the excuse for doing nothing else.

Both Everitt and others on council have gone on record as saying that a bridge should be viewed as nothing more than a piece of territorial transportation infrastructure, with no particular connection to Dawson City any more than the bridges across the Stewart or Pelly Rivers have one to their communities.

"The assurance that was said to us was,” Everitt reported, “that this government would not be in the practice of doing a capital project in a community and then saying that no others would be done.

"The other thing was that if we looked at the platform for the 2002 election, there were the promises that were made.”

Everitt agreed that such promises had been pretty open and obvious during the campaign.

"There were letters signed by the Premier promising the Yukon College, the Arts school ... a bridge ... a new medical centre and a seniors' home."

Sadly, Everitt noted, nothing was promised with regard to sewer and water solutions or a recreation centre.

Fentie did, he added, indicate that the government was concerned about the sewage treatment plant issue.

As at the public meeting, there was some mention of using the bridge construction as a conduit to solve the sewage treatment problem. At both meetings the Premier mentioned the possibility of establishing a sewage treatment lagoon in West Dawson and piping the effluent there for treatment.

This would eliminate the need to spend up to $19 million (by the latest estimate) on a sequencing batch reactor mechanical treatment facility.