Roche Percee mayor Jay Riedel is hoping the province will help fix the main access road into his community that he says has become a "major safety issue."

Riedel says that a range of factors have contributed to the deterioration of the road that connects the village to the highway.

"That road has been such a bone of contention for years because it's been abused by the oil field, it's been abused by the flood in 2011 that basically devastated the village down there at that point, and a lot of the debris that was hauled out after it was demolished was hauled down that road," Riedel said.

"It's basically pounded it out so bad that you can't even do the speed limit down it anymore and it's become a major safety issue."

Riedel is trying to get on the radar of the province for the many road repair projects that they facilitate every year. He hopes to get the funding as soon as possible and possibly have the road fixed by as early as this year. He'd like to see a longer-term re-surfacing, rather than just patch work that's been done in the past.

He says the state of the road is particularly concerning as we head into the summer months, which is a busy time for the community.

"There's lots of traffic in the summer time...everybody loves to come and enjoy that and bring the kids out and get pictures and explore around," Riedel said. "In the summer it's really busy so there's a lot of traffic coming down that road, and we want to try and keep everybody safe."

Riedel says he hopes the government will step up.

"We went through enough heartbreak with the flood and stuff in 2011...we just think that it'd be nice for the government to actually step up and do something for us after all that right?" he said.

Riedel added that he's also applied for a grant for Roche Percee rocks and hopes to get funds from the Canada Coal Transition Initiative. The grant would be about $65,000.

Related Stories