Vandals cut through a heavy cable anchoring a floating boom in Nanaimo’s Colliery Dam Park this month, creating a safety risk for those using the reservoir near the spillway.
It’s the second time in less than a month that the spillway anchors have been damaged.
“It’s costly. It’s dangerous. It’s stupid,” Mayor Leonard Krog said Friday. “I sincerely hope the perpetrators are caught and punished appropriately. I have a very low tolerance for damaging anyone’s property, but particularly public property.”
A temporary fix has been set up, but it will cost between $10,000 and $20,000 to install a replacement anchor and a new protective cover, city engineering manager Bill Sims said Friday.
Booms are required by the province to prevent anyone being swept along by strong currents and fast water flows in the spillway below the popular recreational reservoir.
Each sturdy plastic boom is about three metres long and the entire system is approximately 30 to 40 metres long once it’s linked with heavy metal cable, Sims said.
The full boom is attached to anchors on each side of the spillway.
On Tuesday, it was discovered that the downstream anchor had been completely removed, said Sims, adding it appears as though someone had been cutting the cable with bolt cutters.
“Doing this kind of damage actually puts the public and the infrastructure at risk.”
The spillway runs along a slope where the water flows pretty quickly, Sims said. Water jets off the end to drop 24 to 25 metres to the Chase River below. Anyone going off the end would land on boulders, trees and roots.
There’s no pool at the end of the drop because it’s a man-made structure, he said.
For now, the city has stopped water from entering the spillway so crews can carry out the repair and system upgrading.
The site is a popular destination for local residents.
The two-dam system in the park was constructed in 1910 and 1911 by the Western Fuel Company to supply water for coal washing and for use by miners, mules and horses in the mines.
Homes near the pipeline were allowed to tap the line and eventually water was carried to most of the residences in the South Harewood area, the city said on its website.
Anyone with information or who saw suspicious activity is asked to call the Nanaimo RCMP non-emergency line at 250-754-2345 or the City of Nanaimo public works office at 250-758-5222. The police file number is 24-40853.
