An effort to save the beach is underway.
Councillor Ben Henderson is looking to find out ways to have the beach that suddenly washed up on the shores of the North Saskatchewan River, become a permanent thing. It’s all because Henderson thinks he’s got time on his side.
“I think it’s absolutely worth looking at,” Henderson said. “That berm’s not going anywhere for the next couple of years, as far as I know, so thankfully we have some time to do this properly and figure it out.”
Berms put in the river to help build the LRT bridge for the Valley Line project redirected the water flow and, earlier this spring, silt and sediment from the river gathered into what is now a secret but growing in popularity beach.
“I don’t think there’s any plans to take the berms out quickly as long as they’re building the bridge,” Henderson said.
“It was a drag that it was taking that long to build the bridge but this is a silver lining. It means we have a few years to figure out what we maybe can do to keep the beach. I think it’s certainly worth exploring.”
WATCH BELOW: Edmontonians are discovering a new downtown attraction. As Fletcher Kent explains, it’s attracting sunbathers, boaters and swimmers but the attraction wasn’t built; it just sort of appeared.
A 2012 report warned against the perils of water access because of the flow of the river, so the lawyers may have something to say. But Henderson thinks they can cope.
“If it’s got really heavy use then why wouldn’t you put in life guards,” he asked. “If it’s not going to have heavy use just having a piece of sand there and making sure the piece of sand can be there, I don’t think means we’re obligated to turn it into anything more than a casual facility and I don’t know why there’d be safety implications around that any different from having the river down there right now.”
“People at this time of the year have happily been floating down the river and I’d think when the river is high you wouldn’t be able to use the beach. I’m not even sure the beach would be there when the river was high, it would be under water.”
The federal government too will have something to say about it, since anything related to a waterway in Canada is governed federally.
“We had to get permits to put the berms in, that created this,” said Mayor Don Iveson. “Those permits, I’d suspect, require us to take the berms out and potentially restore the river to what it was before. So it’s going to take some digging, so to speak,”
Henderson said he’ll make his inquiry and he hopes some early first answers will come back quickly so the city can take the next couple of years to plan out everything that needs done to keep the beach.
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