Update on Max Lake Road and gate

Updated: Thursday, August 15.

Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure (MoTI) attended today's Board meeting. I asked how to move forward with a gate for Max Lake Road. The response was that Max Lake Road is a public road and, in general, MoTI does not support restricting access to public roads.

Understandable.

However, there is a covenant for Max Lake with The Land Conservatory, Peter Brother's, and the RDOS. So, there is room for conversation. Both the staff of the RDOS and MoTI have been directed to work together to explore options.

Given the complexity of gating a public road, the number of stakeholders involved... what other options should we consider? Video Surveillance? Signs?

Comments are welcome.

Original Post (Monday, August 12):

Thankful for a resident who brought to the attention of the RDOS and RCMP that there is an abandoned truck at Max Lake. There has been some community discussion around a gate at the road to Max Lake and below is a quick update.

A gate across the road to Max Lake has been in discussion at the RDOS. You may already know that the RDOS is part of a collective covenant for Max Lake with Peter Brothers (Inland Contracting) and The Land Conservancy. The largest landowner next to the covenant is PIB who are also involved in discussion around long range management and illegal dumping. 

The road into Max Lake looks to be MoTi until it reaches the covenant but this will need to be confirmed by MoTi and Inland Contracting.  A note of good timing, MoTi is presenting at our Board meeting this Thursday.  I’ll see if I can get this confirmed from MoTi’s perspective. 

RDOS staff have been in discussion with Peter Bros about a gate and are scheduled to revisit the issue this autumn.  I have share the resident's email with Peter Brothers.  This is a concern that no one is comfortable with. Everyone is in agreement with the importance of the gate but there are complexities that are in the process of being worked through with the different stakeholders involved.  

We all agree that time is of the essence.  The main stumbling block is that the road isn't RDOS land.  So we need to go through the process with all the stakeholders.   The gate is significant, it has to be large enough to accommodate commercial vehicles like fire trucks/Telus trucks, it has to be durable and concreted-in so no one can drive through it.  We also have to bring in boulders (or something) so that people can still access the area on foot but not allow for cars.   All the stakeholders and first responders need to have a key or a way to open the gate (they also have to be informed that the road is gated).   We have to work out who is paying for it and ensure that we have the landowner's permission.    

I will keep everyone updated here. I am also working with staff to plan a community meeting for late Sept. or early Oct. We'll keep you posted on the date. This issue will be part of the discussion if it isn't resolved beforehand.

Please reach out anytime and thanks for reading.