Its been six months since a portion of the Clearwater River Road in Wells Gray Park washed out and there is still no fix, despite an offer for a temporary one from local logging companies.

Clearwater Mayor Merlin Blackwell says the volunteers are waiting for government approval to go ahead before a more permanent fix in the future which could cost several hundred-thousand dollars.

“Apparently [the proposal] is stuck on a desk in Kamloops,” he said. “Everything else has been done. The engineering has been done, the First Nations consultation has been completed. The volunteer group that was probably going to put over $500,000 worth of their time and equipment into fixing that road, that still has not been resolved.”

Blackwell says the Clearwater community is itching to have the road repaired. The washout cut off access for whitewater rafting, kayaking, fly-fishing and camping. It also cut off access to some private properties.

“The volunteers have held on for a long time, they’ve put a lot of effort into trying to make this happen but at a certain point, even the heartiest people look at the government red tape on this and go, ‘no I can’t handle this anymore. We just got to move on with life and with business and leave it up to government to deal with on their own timeline’, which is terrifying to the tourism economy of Clearwater right now,” he said.

Blackwell is hoping the road can be fixed by early January at the latest, noting its unlikely to happen in the winter or during freshet season in the spring.

“If we have to wait till spring for this to happen when you have run off, snow melt, frost on the ground probably still, there might be too much risk to the river itself through salmon habitat and this sort of thing, and to the companies trying to do this for free,” he added.

Blackwell also told NL News he is confident that he will have a meeting with Environment Minister George Heyman soon after Christmas to talk about getting these temporary repairs to the Clearwater River Road completed.