Bridge will pool sewage, ruin waterfront

By Chris Beacom

News Correspondent

Original appearance in The Yukon News, September 22, 2004

DAWSON CITY - A Yukon River bridge in Dawson will negate unwanted ferry line-ups that will continue to grow, says Robin Walsh, manager of Transportation Engineering for the Yukon government.

Walsh was in Dawson last week for the bridge design open house.

He showed statistics from a spring environmental assessment that notes an increase of approximately 1,000 vehicles a year using the ferry over the last 20 years.

This doesn’t include a spike in traffic during the centennial years, when 100 more vehicles a day used the ferry than last summer.

“The ferry definitely won’t last forever,” he said. “It will run out of capacity to carry the traffic at some point in time. The lineups will just become horrendous because it can only carry eight vehicles. It’ll certainly run into capacity problems ­ that will be the first problem it will encounter.”

But Brent McDonald disagrees.

McDonald is a spokesman for the Bridge Awareness Campaign and also works seasonally loading vehicles and driving the George Black ferry.

He said the system can handle the increased traffic pressure.

“You get spikes in lineups because these RV caravans like to leave at the same time, so that’s where the lineups come from. It’s not from the average traffic.”

He noted that two extra ferry lanes have been created to separate local traffic from the RVs.

“It’s working better than systems in the past.”

McDonald has also taken his own informal survey of tourists’ attitude towards the river crossing.

“They don’t actually mind, they think it’s worth the wait,” he said. “For a lot of them, it’s the first time they’ve ever been on a river ferry. It’s quite unique for them. We hear a lot of comments that they have a ton of bridges down south and this is a really neat place and there is no need for a bridge.”

McDonald does not know of any government study that accurately measures the tourists’ attitudes towards the ferry.

“They just assumed they are being inconvenienced,” he said. “For an unbiased study, they need to ask them after they get across the river.”

Bridge construction will also effect fishing habitat around Dawson, he said, noting the 8,000 square meters of gravel that is required to build abutments on both sides of the Yukon River.

“It will push in exponentially more gravel (than the ferry) in a very short period of time,” he said. “A lot of people don’t understand the bridge abutment on the Dawson City side is going to create a concentrated effluent on the down river side of the bridge until they come up with sewage treatment.”

This means sewage will pool down river of the bridge.

“It’s going to swirl in there and that’s prime fishing ground,’ he said.

Tim Coonen, a board member on the Klondike Visitors Association, attended the open house and was flabbergasted with the computer-generated model of the bridge.

“It’s very, very deceptive,” he said. “You don’t get any sense at all of how high the bridge is going to be. The computer-generated video looked at the whole proposal from such a high angle that you get no sense of the height.”

Drawings show an onramp, with a three per cent grade, rising 300 meters from Front Street onto the ramp.

That means a height of 10 meters on top of the dyke, which is already two meters above street level, said Coonen.

“That’s the hill of dirt and fill they are going to put on top of the dyke,” he said. “On top of that there is going to be the deck and the rail and the streetlight.”

Dawsonites have no idea what kind of visual impact this will have on the riverscape, he said.

“This is going to be like taking the visitor reception center and putting it on top of the dyke,” he said. “This is going to be one great big hill right on the waterfront and beyond that it extends one third of the way across the river, which will completely destroy the streetscape going from downtown to the north end, as they make room for this thing.”

Government is far more concerned with budgets than aesthetics, suggested Coonen.

“We are going to have to live with this bridge for the next 75-to-100 years. They are not concerned with the visual impact. They are concerned with the budget ­ we as Dawsonites, need to be concerned about the long term impact.”

The Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in should be concerned about the bridge’s location at George Street because it will destroy the view of Moosehide from the First Nation’s cultural centre.

“I’m surprised the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in isn’t making a little more noise about this, he said. “They are going to see nothing but a great big hill and a bridge sliced right across that. They aren’t going to see Moosehide anymore.”

The view of Moosehide, three kilometers down river, is an integral part of Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in culture, he said.

“When we talk about European tourists, one of the main things they are interested in is First Nations culture. This bridge is an insult and a slap in the face.”

Both Mcdonald and Coonen recommend the government build a bridge upriver of Dawson, between Tr’ochek and Sunnydale, if and when it is necessary.

This project has an estimated cost of $60 million.

“The government should save a little each year and put it outside of town,” said McDonald. “It will keep highway trucks out of West Dawson and out of town.”

Coonen said a southern bridge would be great for Dawson tourism.

“The view of the Klondike and the town in front of you would look like a toy train set from the bridge,” he said. “It will be the most attractive advertising we will ever find for Dawson.”

Contact Chris Beacom at Cbeacom@yukon-news.com

Dawson awarded big mushing event

By Jason Small

Originally in the Whitehorse Star, October 13, 2004

Dawson City will get to host all the levels of dog mushing’s world championships.

Glen Everitt, the race manager for the 2005 World Sled Dog Championships in Dawson City, confirmed this week the Klondike community has scored the mid-distance events for 2007.

The community is hosting the sprint, junior sprints and nordic events, including skijoring, Mar. 11-20, 2005, to coincide with the annual Percy DeWolfe Mail Race.

However, the mid-distance races for the 2005 World Championships will be held in Oregon in January.

Everitt said a community the size of Dawson City couldn’t host all of the events at the same time but it did want to host all the categories.

“There was no way to do them all,” Everitt said in an interview.

“Too many people, too many hotel rooms.”

While Dawson City is too small to host all of the events at the same time, Everitt, the town’s former mayor, said Whitehorse could host all of the events at once.

That’s why Everitt was recently in Poland making a bid to the board of the International Federation of Sleddog Sports (IFSS).

In the end, Dawson City beat out France and Italy for the right to host the mid-distance races in 2007.

“It was unanimous (from) the committee to go to Dawson,” Everitt said.

He said the committee agreed to get out of its traditional trend of alternating the world championships, which are every two years, between North America and Europe.

Initially, the mid-distance events were what Dawson City wanted for 2005, but the committee instead offered the other events, with Oregon taking the mid-distance’s.

Everitt said the mid-distance events are slightly larger combined than all the events Dawson will host in March.

He estimated there will be about 200 dog teams involved in the 2007 event. The mid-distance events include teams made of six and 12 dogs.

Some of the events include stage races, like the Tour de France. Everitt said the run’s are between 70 and 100 km (45 and 60 miles) in length.

He said the IFSS was interested in the fact the 2007 event will use historic routes around the Dawson City area. He said there could be a partnership with Mayo for some of the events.

The dates for the 2007 World Championships in mid-distance racing will be set by the organizers of the Percy DeWolfe race.

Considerations will be made toward timing it with the Percy DeWolfe race and to avoiding a conflict with other major events in the Yukon that year, including the 2007 Canada Winter Games, which are slated to be held in Whitehorse that winter.