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Page 22 Burrards kick off season. 604-463-2281
May 18, 2010
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Barge owner rights the ship
After more than two years, Alouette River eyesore sits upright and could be gone soon. MARIA RANTANEN mrantanen@mrtimes.com
A
partially sunken barge with a half-built house that has been languishing on the Alouette River in Pitt Meadows was raised over the weekend and its owner hopes it will be gone within a few weeks. Pumps were going non-stop for 48 hours, as the tides were favourable to raising the 180-foot barge, with owner Ralph Rietel overseeing the operation with the help of a couple of friends. “Being barge chief, I guess I had to be there the whole time,” Rietel said. On Monday, Rietel was back on the barge overseeing the pumping to stabilize and level i. He said he’ll keep pumping it in order to keep it stable. Since the hoses are so heavy, Rietel said he needs help moving them around. “I was unhappy when (the barge) went down,” Rietel said when asked if he was happy the barge was up again. Rietel plans to have the ramps leading up to the barge taken away on Wednesday. Then, as soon as possible, he will get a breaker to come and break up the barge and take away the scrap. The barge partially sank a few years ago and Rietel only had sporadic access to the dikes in order to work on it. He also had health problems that prevented him to do work on it. He said the barge could only be raised when the tides were right. “If I had had proper access, this would not have happened,” Rietel said. Rietel once again got access to the dike in the fall from the City of Pitt Meadows, and after two failed attempts at raising it this winter, the tides were finally favourable this weekend and he was able to start pumping the water out. The half-built house on the east end of the barge is water-logged, Rietel said, and therefore they have to keep working to stabilize the entire barge.
When the ramps are gone, Rietel said, the barge can get closer to the foreshore which is much shallower and should help keep it stable. Rietel was originally building a house on the barge he pulled up from the bottom of the Fraser River, and he planned to take the barge up the coastline of B.C. Because of health problems, he wasn’t able to finish the house. Rietel owns the foreshore where the barge is anchored. The City of Pitt Meadows asked Rietel several times to clean up the area around the barge. But because it’s on navigable waters, it isn’t within the city’s jurisdiction to order it removed — it is under both provincial and federal jurisdiction. The barge has never had fuel on it, Rietel said, and therefore didn’t cause any pollution to the river.
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Maria Rantanen/TIMES
(Top photo) Ralph Reitel posed for a photo Monday after his barge was raised. (Above) The barge as of last Tuesday.
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