River valley restrictions for the long weekend

LETHBRIDGE – It’s the first long weekend of the summer, but for those wanting to spend their days in Lethbridge’s river valley, you might be out of luck.

“We’ve been working as hard as we can to ensure those pathways and parks are open for the users in Lethbridge. Right now, what we have been doing is focusing on Indian Battle Park,” said Richard Hildebrand with the City of Lethbridge.

All facilities in the river valley are open, but several areas have limited access due to safety concerns.

“Most of our parks are open to a certain degree. We have identified the hazards and, as a result, there are some barricades in place. We would ask people to please respect those barricades and be safe while they continue to use the parks,” added Hildebrand.

Bridgeview RV Resort is experiencing the same slow and steady approach to re-opening.

Area by area, crews are working to clean up the flood aftermath.

“We normally have 212 sites and we are still down 103, so we are only at 50 per cent capacity at max and right now. Since Saturday we have been sitting at 50 to 60 campers per night,” said Denise McArthur with Bridgeview RV Resort.

There is still about five inches of mud laying in areas of the campground. The wilderness area won’t open until August and the back half of the campground will be delayed by a couple of weeks. The limited capacity is hitting at a very busy time for the RV resort, “this is the first weekend that kids are finally out of school, everybody is happy and so all our 212 sites would be full for the long weekend.”

Despite the slow going clean-up process, both the city of Lethbridge and Bridgeview RV resort say no amount of mud will hamper celebrating Canada’s big day.