Village of Nakusp council has agreed to apply for a license of occupation so that the Kootenay Adaptive Sport Association (KASA) can apply for a grant to repair a washout on the Nakusp and Slocan Railway (NSR) trail.
KASA needs to secure at least $100,000 to repair approximately 200 metres of the trail near Box Lake just south of Nakusp.
“We received funding from the Columbia Basin Trust last year to hire Nelson-based SNT Engineering and they gave us three different options around how we could fix the trail,” said KASA president Janis Neufeld.
“Options included putting in a culvert and use existing material to smooth out the trail, putting in a culvert and bringing in material to make the trail flat or building bridges or boardwalks across the slide area.”
The washout occurred in April of 2016 and machinery would potentially have to be brought in to make the repairs.
KASA would explore a variety of options to hire staff to complete the project.
“We’d either hire a local company or employ our own staff. We sometimes hire individuals with barriers to employment to help give them work experience,” said Neufeld.
“If we ended up building a boardwalk, that could give our staff carpentry experience to build it.”
KASA crews have been busy repairing trails across the Arrow Lakes region recently. They rebuilt a bridge that was swept away from a landslide near the Galena Trail last year and they’ve been replacing boardwalks along a trail in Winlaw Regional Nature Park this year.
Neufeld will find out if KASA has secured funding for the NSR trail in early 2021. If funding is secured, crews hope to start construction on the project in May 2021 and be done in the fall of 2021.
The entire NSR trail runs approximately 50 kilometres between Nakusp and Three Forks.
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