Highway 99 will not be rerouted to avoid Lillooet slide zone, says minister

B.C.'s transportation minister is rejecting calls to reroute Highway 99 northeast of Lillooet, after a slow-moving landslide closed the route a week ago. 

Minister Todd Stone is expected to inspect the site, about 17 kilometres northeast of Lillooet, Friday.

On Wednesday the province announced the route through the 10 Mile Slide area is now open to single-lane, alternating traffic.

Commercial trucks will also be limited to carrying 50 per cent of their legal load until the stability of the road surface is further assessed.

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A crew had to dig a five-metre lane into the side of the mountain to allow cars to get through after a section of the road slipped about a metre last week.

Stone said the road is crumbling away due to an ongoing earth flow in that area and the province is trying to come up with a long-term solution, but warns it won't be cheap.

"It's not going to be easy. This is an area that is prone to significant movement," said Stone.

Earlier in the week Lillooet Mayor Marg Lampman suggested rerouting the highway altogether, but Stone said that would be too expensive.

"What I think is going to work here is a fix on the current site that's going to take a tremendous amount of geo-technical work to really build up the supports in and around where the slide is taking place."