The Town of Drumheller will be replacing Bridge 11 on Highway 10X during the summer of 2022. As a safety precaution, there was a weight restriction put on the bridge in respect to its age and condition. In May 2020, after several years of submissions, the Strategic Transportation Infrastructure Program, Local Road Bridge, (STIP-LRB) grant application was approved. Under this grant, the Province will pay approximately 75%, the Town of Drumheller will contribute approximately 21%, and Wheatland County will contribute 4%, for a total project cost of $3.2million.

During the 2021 engineering work, including detailed design, Provincial and Federal permits were carried out. The Federal and Provincial permit requirements have now been met by receipt of no objection communications from all applicable authorizing agencies.

Details of the project are:

• Removal of existing bridge and replacement with a new bridge;
• New bridge to match the existing architecture of the Highway 10X bridges;
• New bridge will be approximately 1.5m higher than the current bridge to meet current regulatory Rosebud River flow requirements.

Based on the prohibitive cost of installing a detour bridge, along with the limited traffic at this location, it was determined by both jurisdictions that a temporary detour bridge will not be installed for the duration of this project. The suggested detour route will be via Highway 56, as identified in the attached alternate routes map.

The next steps of the project will be:

• Finalize some land acquisition and land zoning changes to allow for bridge construction;
• Finalize detailed design;
• Release the tender package to the industry;
• Award the tender to the successful contractor;
• Submission from the contractor of and order of components;
• Remove current bridge;
• Construct the bridge.

Emergency services have been briefed on this project’s details.
The Town of Drumheller and Wheatland County will be facilitating two information sessions:

• Thursday, June 23 at the Wayne Community Hall
• Tuesday, June 28 at the Dalum Community Hall

Both sessions will begin at 6:00pm with doors open to the public at 5:30pm. There will be a short presentation with a question and answer period to follow. An RSVP is not required.