The Garnet Valley Agri-Tourism Association is asking the municipality of Summerland for load restrictions on its road.
鈥淕arnet Valley Road was not constructed to withstand heavy and continuous industrial truck traffic,鈥� Steve Lornie of the Garnet Valley Agri-Tourism Association told council. 鈥淚t will deteriorate quickly under these conditions and will revert to the pot-holed mess it was prior to repaving.鈥�
An extensive road project, completed in 2017, involved water separation and road improvements in the area. The estimated cost of this project was close to $6.8 million.
Lornie said Garnet Valley Road is a rural road and is not designed to handle heavy truck traffic.
He and others in the Garnet Valley Agri-Tourism Association are concerned about the effects of gravel extraction from a site at 27410 Garnet Valley Rd.
The application for the mine site was presented in December 2023 and was approved by British Columbia鈥檚 Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation in 2024, despite significant opposition from the community and beyond.
To preserve the road, the association is asking council to set load limits on it and to charge fees for soil removal and deposit.
Both these measures are allowed under the Community Charter, Lornie said. He added that fees collected from soil extraction could be used for road repairs along Garnet Valley Road and Jones Flat Road.
Graham Statt, chief administrative officer for Summerland, said the community already has a load restriction in place on some roads within the community. He added that the soil removal fee could be set specifically for Garnet Valley Road.
Lornie said the proposals already have support from most sectors within Summerland, as well as from Penticton-Summerland MLA Amelia Boultbee.
In addition to the requests for load restrictions and soil extraction fees, the Garnet Valley Agri-Tourism Association is pursuing other avenues to challenge the gravel pit operation.
In the fall of 2024, the association began raising money for a legal challenge of the decision to approve the gravel pit.
