Driver patience and a bit of sun is needed after an abundance of culvert failures this spring and a week of rain and snow late last month created a frustrating time for some area motorists as they plow mud as opposed to just driving down pristine country roads.

Lorne Willner, Reeve of the Rural Municipality of Arm River, said the snowmelt around four weeks ago was very fast and water ran across roads in a lot of places because the culverts couldn’t keep up. He said the two inches of rain and two inches of snow they received a couple weeks ago then washed out a number of those same roads again making for muddy conditions.

“All you do is you put flags up,” said Willner. “You barricade roads off, block roads (and) put warning flags up. I haven’t heard of anybody that’s had accidents. That’s all we can do is warn people that the hazards are there or block the roads, so they don’t drive on them.”

Willner said at this stage of the spring the RM can’t bleed mud or haul gravel when the roads are too muddy to drive on, so they just have to wait for the sun to come out and dry up some of the water. He said it is going to be an ongoing process to fix all the washed out roads and dig out the culverts, so people need to drive according to the current road conditions.

“If there’s flags, if there’s markers (or) if there’s barricades then beware that there are hazards and watch out for them,” he said. “As far as driving in the mud (people) just have to be patient. There is nothing we can do about the muddy roads. The gravel’s there, it’s just all chewed up.”

RM of Dundurn Reeve Fred Wilson said they have a few heavily travelled roads that were in pretty rough shape, but their higher ground helped to dry them out a little faster. He said getting the snow graded off before the original melt also helped keep the roads in good condition.

“We had a couple spots (with) maybe a four or five inches layer of slop on top of them,” said Wilson, noting they’ve run their grader a few times since the melt and have already put the gravel back in place. “A couple of them we graded it right off, but most of them it wasn’t too bad. We don’t have near the roads like (Arm River) has. We’ve got Highway 11 right through the middle of us, so that takes a lot of pressure off us.”

Hilton Spencer, Reeve of the RM of Craik, said the abnormal runoff this year has washed out some of their roads. He said the recent rain and snow then made the roads really sloppy, but the RM employees are out trying to get everything fixed.

To read more please see the May 5 print edition of The Davidson Leader.