Politician makes 3rd bid to get Nuttby Mountain highway cam
A Colchester County, N.S., councillor wants the province to put a highway video camera on one of the highest stretches of road in mainland Nova Scotia, despite being told twice by the Department of Transportation that isn't going to happen.
Michael Gregory wants drivers to be able to see the nutty weather on Nuttby Mountain before they get stuck in the thick of a disorienting fog or a blinding snow squall.
Caught in a winter whiteout
Nuttby Mountain sits on Highway 311 in the Cobequid Hills. It's not far from a working maple farm that attracts tourists, and is about halfway between Truro and Tatamagouche.
For people who travel between those two places for work, it's the quickest way to commute. But it's not necessarily the safest. "Extreme" and "dangerous" are just a couple of the words Gregory uses to describe the weather on Nuttby Mountain.
"There's snow there all the time this time of the year," he said, describing times when a beautiful day turns into a terrible one on top of Nuttby Mountain. It happened to him and his wife this winter, on their way to do shopping in Truro.
"When I came almost to the top of Nuttby Mountain I thought, 'Oh my goodness,'" he said. "It was a whiteout. You couldn't see the centre line because of snow drifting."
Had there been a highway cam, Gregory said they would have looked at it and not attempted that drive.
In January, thanks to Gregory's persistence, the CAO of the municipality sent a letter to the Department of Transportation asking for a highway cam for Nuttby Mountain.
Gregory said he first raised the need for one in 2013, but was told the video cameras are for 100-series highways. After his winter drive with his wife, he asked Colchester County's mayor to raise the issue with the Department of Transportation again. Which she did, with no success.
The Department of Transportation lists its 51 highway cameras online. Most are on 100-series highway, trunk roads and weather stations.
A study of the weather patterns and local micro-climates determined the best location for those weather stations, said department spokeswoman Marla MacInnis. The study did not identify any locations on Route 311 that required a weather station, she said.
Gregory said it's not the municipality's responsibility to put up camera. "I'm not going to give up on this right now because I have a bee in my bonnet."
