November 4th, 2024

Parks crews cleaning up highway interchange ‘eyesore’

By Collin Gallant on October 10, 2024.

Crews from Poplar Mechanics clear dead or dying trees along Gershaw Drive on Wednesday morning. The city parks department says it will clear brushy areas around the Highway 1 and 3 overpass this fall and present "beautification" options for 2025.--News photo Collin Gallant

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An overgrown eyesore in central Medicine Hat is being cleaned up by crews of tree cutters this week while parks planners look at a potential project to spruce up the interchange of Highways 1 and 3.

The overpass of the Trans-Canada Highway at Gershaw Drive was the site of major on- and off-ramp construction in 2022, but the city irrigation system failed on provincially controlled lands that year.

Rather than move ahead with a potentially costly irrigation replacement on the provincially controlled land, the decision was made to “naturalize” the slopes and boulevards.

That raised complaints among citizens who saw weeds and brush shoot up on one of the major transportation routes through the city.

Officials told the News on Wednesday that the area has now been mowed low, and contracted crews are removing about 100 trees that were in “significant decline.”

“As a gateway to the city, we understand that you want it to be aesthetically pleasing,” said Jamie McLeod, the planning manager at the city parks department.

“We’re hopeful that we can present some options to council for beautification and the costs, and potentially move toward construction in 2025.

Seeding with native, more-drought-resistant vegetation had been done over the last two seasons, said McLeod, but with little progress even after an unusually wet spring in 2024, the department is changing the plan.

“We’re revisiting (landscape) options,” he said.

The issue has come up several times at city council over the last two years, with council members saying they had received complaints about the look of the land with runners, damaged and dead trees.

Administrators said that since the land is controlled by the province as highway right-of-way, they would not recommend large investment, especially since more changes are planned for the area and the final layout is not yet known.

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