Getting a handle on our changing Mountain

Examining the latest problems with Hamilton’s Mountain accesses, you can’t help but be struck by how some city officials seem surprised.

You can call the latest problem of the Claremont Access northbound lanes being closed due to rock-face instability many things. You can’t call it surprising. Everything about this was eminently predictable.

One lane of the same access has been closed for years due to fear of rock slides. The metal walls spiked to the rock face back in the ’70s are buckled in many places, and have long been recognized as ineffective in terms of retaining rock — in fact it’s now common wisdom they do more harm than good by obscuring the rock surface so damage and other activity is masked. There was a rock slide in 2012 and warnings about possible wall failures around the same time.

It’s not just the Claremont. Concerns have been expressed about the Jolley Cut as well. And the city is heavily involved in “rock scaling” work on various accesses to pre-empt rocks falling on to the road below.

It’s not that the city has been doing nothing. A geotechnical expert has been retained to study the future of those aging metal walls. That study will be accelerated given the most recent events, which have the downbound Claremont lanes closed indefinitely.

That’s good. It’s time this specific problem, and the much bigger challenge of all our Mountain access routes, were treated with a much greater degree of urgency. It can’t be enough to move at a relaxed pace just because there haven’t been rock falls or related problems. There will be more. They could easily be more serious. Public safety could easily be at risk.

When we wrote about this last July, we made sure to be clear this isn’t about being alarmist. The sky is not falling. That commentary was in response to a report by Golder Associates that noted several area accesses are at “high risk” due to erosion and rock slides. Another 15 were rated at moderate or minor risk levels on the “slope criticality” scale. But we did raise the question of whether or not we’re doing enough.

Now the question arises again. Does Hamilton need a more holistic approach to how we live with the escarpment? It is made of relatively soft rock, which we know can be affected by the wind, rain and severe weather that are features of climate change.

Do we need an overarching strategy for more than just preventive maintenance? That would be costly, which is probably one reason decision-makers aren’t eager to deal with it. Removing those obsolete metal walls, for example, could cost in the tens of millions, and we already have a gaping infrastructure deficit.

But beyond erosion, rock face instability and the resulting fallout, the escarpment isn’t going anywhere.

We would be wise to get ahead of these changes before they get ahead of us.