An excavator that fell into Pontoon Lake, outside Yellowknife, has now been extracted – the second piece of heavy equipment to need rescuing from the lake this month.
The excavator was retrieved on Friday morning. Earlier in August, a dump truck working on the same road construction project had to be hauled out of the lake.
The NWT government says contractor RTL Robinson Enterprises reports there are no visible signs, so far, of a spill from either incident.
Even so, not one but two pieces of machinery dropping into the lake, just northeast of Yellowknife and near some cabins, frustrated nearby residents and raised questions about water contamination.
The GNWT said the water was being tested and results were due back next week. (Later on Friday, the CBC reported the territory had received the results and no issues were noted.) Booms were deployed in a bid to contain any contamination.
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Binay Yadav is the director of transportation for the GNWT’s Department of Infrastructure. We asked him why this project proved so susceptible to accidents involving equipment at work near the lake.
Yadav said the GNWT and contractor knew, going into the project, that this was a “risky” area. That was the point, he said – the road near Pontoon Lake and another nearby stretch of highway, near Prosperous Lake, showed signs of slope erosion that were proving concerning to travellers.
“We were monitoring [those areas for] the last few years, and we decided we needed to widen the road and install a guardrail so it becomes safer,” Yadav told Cabin Radio in a Friday interview.
“We know we are working on risky zones at these two locations, Prosperous and Pontoon, to make them safer for the public. And these incidents are unfortunate, but we learned the lessons, and we are going to implement them so we can eliminate this type of thing.”
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Work at Prosperous Lake hasn’t faced the same challenges, Yadav said.
At Pontoon, the first incident – on August 11 – saw a dump truck fall sideways into the lake.
Yadav said the truck had been dropping its load as part of work to widen the embankment that runs up to the lake, but the slope being worked on slumped.
That led to a change of plan. Instead of working on top of that area, an excavator was brought in to work along the edges.
However, the 37-ton excavator also fell in three days later.
Yadav said the latest plan involves extending the road surface on the far side of the lake. The contractor has widened the road in that direction enough to create a new lane, he said, which allowed enough room to recover the excavator.
The latest approach, Yadav said, will mean “in future, we will have a better, stable road.”
