• DEPARTMENTS
  • Agriculture
    • Spraying
  • Emergency Services
  • Development
  • Finance
    • Education Tax
    • Grants
  • Policies
  • Public Works
    • Utilities
    • Landfill & Recycling
  • Transportation
    • Oilfield Activity
    • Road Maintenance
    • Bridges
    • Projects
    • Transportation Staff
    • Road Bans
    • Tenders
      
      
  • Employment Opportunities

Road Bans

RE: ROAD BANS

Road Use within Birch Hills County         

 

Road Bans are imposed to reduce the amount of damage that occurs to Birch Hills County’s roadways during spring breakup, a time when the gravel roads are filled with moisture and susceptible to damage from heavily weighted vehicles.

Road Bans are our way of getting the most of tax dollars, and minimizing the amount of repair that is required to maintain a high standard of road.

 

Birch Hills County’s Road Use Agreement Guidelines

Road Use Agreements are written to ensure that a business operating within Birch Hills County is making sure that the roads they, or their contractors, travel on are properly maintained. The County has the responsibility to maintain the roads to a certain extent but cannot be expected to keep up with a business that puts enough additional traffic on the road to require daily grading.

Guidelines for this are as follows (in addition to county grader):

Up to 20 trucks per day – Birch Hills County will assume road maintenance requirements

Over 20 trucks/day up to 40/day – grader on the road once per week of hauling

Over 40 trucks/day up to 60/day – grader on the road twice per week of hauling

Over 60 trucks/day up to 80/day – grader on the road three times per week of hauling

And so on…. (the County will cover grading for up to 20 trucks per day, once per week as a maximum)

The material supplier is responsible to communicate with Birch Hills County regarding any increase in road use.  Birch Hills County will, at times, find out about larger hauls going on through our ratepayers and other sources; instead of acting after the fact, our municipality would rather be proactively informed by the supplier before they commence a hauling program so maintenance issues can be addressed.

It is the holder of the road use agreement’s responsibility to ensure that the contractors hauling their material keep up with this maintenance agreement; the supplier does not need to hire the grader/water truck if another company is doing the trucking, just ensure that the contracted company does.

Dust control/water trucks are used on an as needed basis but if there is dust or extremely dry conditions for grading, water or calcium will be required. Again this is for the contractors or the company doing the actual trucking to apply and is largely impacted by weather conditions.

The supplier can incorporate this cost into the material price and perform the maintenance in-house, but we find that many companies would rather list it as a condition within their agreement with their contractor, since many contractors would rather use their own equipment as this is often less expensive.

Any questions or concerns regarding these guidelines can be directed to the:

Birch Hills County Office (780) 694-3793

or the cell phones of:

Michael Coy (780) 512-3085 or

Dion Hynes (780) 864-0367