Family day draws huge crowd
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how about a two week spring break?
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musing on amalgamation
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Friday
February 15 2013 www.newwestnewsleader.com
andrew bilesky defeated fellow royal city curling club skip brent pierce to advance to the canadian championship. See Page a17
Vital program could be lost: trustee Grant Granger
ggranger@newwestnewsleader.com
MarIO barTeL/NeWSLeaDer
keith whitely, an engineering technologist with the city of new westminster, examines photos of the damaged section of the bailey bridge that connects to coquitlam at the foot of Braid Street. The one-lane bridge has been closed to traffic until it can be repaired.
Splits shut down Bailey bridge City hoping to get it open again sooner Grant Granger
ggranger@newwestnewsleader.com
The single-lane Braid Street Bailey bridge connecting New Westminster to Coquitlam’s United Boulevard will be closed for at least a couple of weeks as authorities look at options to repairing splits in its structure. The wood bridge was supposed to be closed for 12 hours last Saturday for a structural assessment, the first to be done on the bridge since 2007. That’s when it was discovered
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there were splits in two of its remaining trusses to determine if significant trusses where they are they are suffering from fatigue and held together by steel pins. stress, but the results weren’t known The bridge has not as of the NewsLeader’s been reopened to traffic deadline. video-online] since then. On Wednesday he said City of New the city was looking at a newwestnewsleader.com repair to get the bridge Westminster chief engineer Jim Lowrie said back in service sooner the problem would have been caused rather than later. by “excessive loading” from all the “I don’t have a timeframe of when heavy vehicle traffic that regularly that would be.” crosses the bridge between the two Media reports this week stated cities’ industrial parks. that New Westminster unilaterally Lowrie said the engineers also lowered the load limit on the bridge conducted gamma ray testing on the in January, but Lowrie says that
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doesn’t tell the whole story. “To say we lowered it is not entirely correct,” Lowrie said. “There was no limit before.” He said the 48-tonne limit imposed by the city was to meet the recommended specifications of the manufacturer, Acrow Bridges, based in Richmond. Although New West is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the bridge it shares the costs with Coquitlam. If it was to be replaced, both councils would have to approve. please see baILey, a3
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The spectre of the federal government taking immigrant settlement workers out of schools has the New Westminster board of education concerned. In 2005, British Columbia used federal money to set up Settlement Workers in Schools (SWIS) programs in 10 districts with the highest concentration of immigrants, including New Westminster. It has since expanded SWIS to 21 districts throughout the province. Much of the motivation for locating the service in schools was based on them being one of the first places immigrant and refugee families go after arriving in Canada. Only B.C. and Manitoba administers settlement services in their provinces while the federal government runs them elsewhere in the country. However, Ottawa has now decided to do it for all provinces putting many current provincial programs, including SWIS, in jeopardy. please see SeTTLeMeNT, a3