The City of Kamloops will be scaling and blasting 4,000 cubic metres of rock face on the north side of Ord Road starting this month.

That’s enough rock to fill nearly two Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Civic operations director Jen Fretz says the work will take about six to eight weeks and says there will be intermittent detours in place where the project will happen, just east of the intersection with Tranquille Road.

“Each year the City of Kamloops makes sure we do an analysis of rock faces within the city, obviously for safety reasons. And that rock face on Ord Road was one that is ranked higher as far as a safety risk is concerned, so we’re making sure we’re investing in scaling that rock to make sure that it’s not going to impact the public, and the travelling public.”

An exact cost for the work has not yet been provided.

The work comes ahead of Trans Mountain’s pipeline expansion project, which will force the Ord Road dog park to close for several months when the corporation is working in that area.

The Ord Road dog park will, however, stay open when crews do rock scaling this month nearby.

“So it’s very close to the work that Trans Mountain’s going to be doing but it’s completely unrelated. So we have to do some rockface scaling and blasting, in order to make sure that the rock face is safe for the travelling public on Ord Road. And that work will start sometime in January, and although the location is very similar it’s totally unrelated to the Trans Mountain work,” Fretz says.

Fretz says Trans Mountain will be paying to rehabilitate and reopen the Ord Road dog park, and will be also spending about $170,000 to build a new dog park nearby, on Aviation Way, which will likely be open this spring.