The County of Barrhead will send a letter to Minister of Transportation Ric McIver outlining council’s concerns with a United Conservative Party (UCP) platform promise to reclassify service rigs as off-road vehicles and to replace rural road permits with an annual provincial permit.
Councillors passed a motion to send the letter during their May 21 meeting after CAO Debbie Oyarzun brought forward an e-mail that had been sent out to municipalities by Roadata Services Ltd, a private company that acts as a permit agent for about two-thirds of Alberta’s municipalities.
Roadata’s e-mail urged municipalities to raise their concerns with these potential changes “in a very loud” and informative manner.
“If (the UCP) proceeds with carrying out what they committed to doing, there could be some very serious consequences to the county and to the county’s budget, as well as to the ratepayers,” Oyarzun said.
Permitting process
Assistant superintendent of public works Ken Hove explained to councillors that prior to a service rig moving through the county, the company that operates the rig must contact Roadata to acquire a permit.
Hove said that Roadata would plot a route through the county to the rig’s intended location with the help of the Transportation Routing and Vehicle Information System (TRAVIS), which is administered by Alberta Transportation.
He said the county itself would also have input into the routing and could direct the service rigs away from roads that are very soft because of the weather or are subject to road bans.
Hove added that the service rig would not get a permit if the oil company that the rig is working for doesn’t have a road use agreement with the county.
“Right now today, nobody could move an over-dimension and an over-weight load in the county without getting a road use agreement,” said Hove.
“Without any of this in place, the service rig can kind of come and go and pick the routing that he wants on his own. There’s nobody there to determine a route for them.”
Hove also explained that the permitting process allows the county to recoup expenses relating to roads damaged by oil and gas companies.
If the county knows when and where a service rig is entering the county, they know the appropriate time to inspect the roads they travelled on and who to bill for any damage that was caused by the rig, he said.
“Without this being in place, we would miss all those steps. We wouldn’t know when they’re coming in. We wouldn’t know who’s coming in, or who they’re working for, or when to go and inspect this damage,” Hove said.
Essentially, they would have to rely on ratepayers and grader operators reporting damage to roads when they see it, he noted. If the company that was responsible could not be identified, the cost of repairs would fall on the ratepayers.
The pushback
After receiving that e-mail, Oyarzun said county staff reached out to the province and asked if they would conduct a public consultation before carrying out these changes.
The first response was that the province had no such plans, as these items were part of the UCP’s platform and “the election cycle was the consultation.”
However, Oyarzun said she believes the UCP has gotten a fair bit of pushback on this issue.
One of the entities pushing back is the Rural Municipalities of Alberta (RMA). On May 17, the provincial association sent a letter to McIver explaining the issues with classifying service rigs as off-road equipment, as is the case with farm machinery.
The letter stressed that farm machinery is seasonal in nature and thus exemptions for it are reasonable, but service rigs can operate year-round, are likely heavier than farm machinery, likely travel at much higher speeds and are not uniform in size and weight.
“Providing exemptions for service rigs under the Transportation Safety Act … is likely to lead to premature damage of municipal road and bridge infrastructure, which will increase municipal costs and increase the likelihood of damage to service rigs and other industrial equipment travelling such roads,” the letter said.
The letter also stated that creating a centralized provincial permitting system would limit the decision-making abilities of local authorities and increase the amount of road degradation, thus creating additional costs for tax payers.
“Municipal overweight/dimension vehicle permitting is intended to provide municipalities with the tools to ensure that the roads they manage are used only by the vehicle types they were designed to accommodate, and that large vehicles operate within municipalities with minimal impacts on infrastructure or the safety of the travelling public,” the letter stated.
“With this in mind, it is unclear how the policy commitment will increase jobs in the oil and gas sector, as it is more likely to increase municipal costs and damage infrastructure that industry relies on for access to natural resources.”
Although the provincial association has fashioned its own letter, Oyarzun indicated that council may want to add its voice to the debate, either with its own letter to McIver or perhaps a resolution for the upcoming meeting of municipalities within the RMA’s Pembina Zone.
Reeve Doug Drozd asked what the rationale would be for these changes. Oyarzun suggested that without naming any names, it might be more difficult in some municipalities for oil companies to obtain these permits.
Coun. Darrell Troock said it would doubtlessly be easier for companies not to deal with the “hassle” of getting permits.
“But there’s got to be protocols to protect the municipalities. That’s all there is to it,” he added.
Council decided that a resolution for the Pembina Zone meeting might be unnecessary work for administration, but agreed that a letter to the McIver.
It was also suggested they might bring up the issue in future conversations with Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken.
