There’s concern that rising water on the Fraser River could force construction to slow down at the Big Bar landslide site, northwest of Kamloops.

Department of Fisheries and Oceans director Gwil Roberts says crews are continuing to work in a challenging environment.

“That snowpack, that has caused water levels to rise quite significantly in the last week. As far as (potential) landslides, I don’t think that has been so much a concern to us, as much as what is the rise in water levels doing at the site, and how is that impacting our local work?”

Roberts says crews are hoping to have a fish pump set up by late May, to get fish past the slide site.

“Again, the fish ladder is being constructed to allow fish to move in their own effort up to a holding pool. And then that holding area, the (fish pump) will then get them across using a series of tubes above the slide site,” Roberts says.

“If for some reason we’re not able to use the fish pump, for whatever reason, we will be trucking the fish that we put into tanks and transport them by truck to a nearby site, about four-and-a-half kilometres north. And again, that’ll be upstream of the slide site and they’ll be able to move from there.”

A higher-capacity fish pump would then be set up in June, well before the peak of the Fraser River salmon run, expected in August and September.

Roberts was giving an update on work from Peter Kiewit Sons ULC, which started work in January after being granted a $17.6-million-dollar contract.