ATHABASCA/WESTLOCK – Alberta’s Minister of Infrastructure Prasad Panda made a stop in Athabasca last week along with Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken to officially announce to local officials their communities were approved for Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) grants, totalling millions of dollars for the communities of Athabasca and Westlock.
For Athabasca, it means the Aspen Regional Water Services Commission (ARWSC) will be able to upgrade and relocate its raw water intake and complete upgrades to the existing pumphouse with $1,043,000 from the federal government, $1,518,300 from the province and $168,700 from a previous grant.
For Westlock, $1,248,256 in federal funding along with $1,029,812 from the province will go towards stormwater management facilities upgrading — namely the construction of a three-hectare naturalized storm water management collection area and upgrade to the main drainage channel.
Athabasca County reeve Larry Armfelt noted it was the hard work of the ARWSC, which is a consortium made up of the town and county of Athabasca and Boyle, for getting the grant.
“I give full credit to the water commission – Kevin Haines and Jamie Giberson – those guys deserve a tremendous amount of credit. If it wasn't for them, this probably would not be taking place,” Armfelt said.
Town of Athabasca mayor Colleen Powell said the intake should have been replaced 10 years ago when ARWSC was formed, but there was no money for it at the time.
“We did not replace our water intake pipe when we built the commission, because we ran out of money frankly. It was $1 million in those days, and now it's $2.8 million,” she said.
The ICIP funding comes from a bilateral agreement signed between the provinces and the federal government and is a cost sharing program focusing on four different streams; community, culture and recreation infrastructure, green infrastructure, public transit infrastructure and rural and northern community's infrastructure. Panda credited van Dijken with getting approval for the projects in his constituency.
“We had more than 740 expressions of interest across the province; we prioritized 70 of them,” Panda said. “Your local MLA has a loud louder voice with me, because we've been friends since Wildrose days. He worked with our department to prioritize a couple of projects in this area."
van Dijken thanked the community representatives for being prepared when submitting their ICIP requests, saying it made the job easier when choosing shovel-ready projects.
“Part of the process of identifying projects also is when the local elected officials are well prepared. It makes my job a lot easier and both of these projects I would suggest that they had done their homework very well; met the criteria and had funding in place,” said van Dijken.
For Athabasca County councillor and ARWSC chair Kevin Haines, it has been a long process to replace the 64-year-old intake that started three years ago with a grant of $168,700 from the Community Resiliency Program, which gave them the ability to apply for the ICIP grant.
"The commission doesn’t have a lot of ability to borrow money so, we either have to charge it back through water rates or the municipalities have to kick in money to us, or we have to try to look for alternate means,” Haines said. “We've been trying to get some grants lined up to help with the overall costs and the first grant gave us the ability to apply for this grant."
The hope is with the changes the intake will be able to get the water treatment plant up to the 80 litres per second it was built for. Currently the intake is able to get up to 40 litres per second “on a good day” for the plant that supplies water to the Town of Athabasca, the Village of Boyle and Athabasca County hamlets — approximately 12,000 users.
ARWSC manager Jamie Giberson noted there are specific times of the year where work is allowed to take place in the river and that all the needed consulting and environmental impact studies have been completed.
“We will probably look to tender in early May,” Giberson said. “There are limited times when you're allowed to do the work in the river so, we have to make sure we the main target that window, July to September.”
Panda added that $600,000 has also been allocated for improvements at the Athabasca provincial building.
“Glenn also got some funding for the Capital Maintenance and Renewal project,” he said. “The provincial building here we are replacing the boiler and building management control system electronics with $600,000 on that project.”
Two other CMR grants are to replace the chiller and the main switch gear and electrical motor controls in the provincial building.
“What is boils down to is, it’s needed repairs and maintenance. These are the things we are identifying (and) we’re able to get the money out into the area to people to work,” van Dijken said.
Westlock
Town of Westlock Coun. David Truckey also travelled to Athabasca to meet with Panda and van Dijken and formalize receiving the grant, which will go towards storm water management and on top of the funding from the federal and provincial governments, the town will pitch in an additional $1,734,932.
“In 2016 we had a one-in-100-year rain event so, that brought forward the need for increased and improved drainage in the community. We had a lot of flooding, a lot of flooded basements, and such,” Truckey said. “This expansion of our stormwater drainage system is huge for our community. There are lots of different issues that are at the forefront and we don't want to turn our back on those, but right now, drainage is a big deal.”
Truckey said if there is a heavy rain it can be counted in minutes before flooding problems start. The Eastglen and Southview areas are particularly hard hit when the rain falls, "but it’s an issue that affects the whole community,” said Truckey.
The grant money is going specifically to an area just outside of the town for a storage pond and a naturalized area that will also filter and clean the water before it goes into the Wabash Creek, said Town of Westlock CAO Simone Wiley later.
“The channel was constructed over 30 years ago to convey runoff for the town to Wabash Creek and to provide drainage for the adjacent farmland. The condition of the channel has degraded over time and is in need of rehabilitation and upsizing. The channel is overgrown with vegetation reducing the capacity of the channel,” she said.
Wiley added that pre-qualification was completed Aug. 27 with packages sent out to the pre-qualified companies Sept. 15.
“Our tender package will be provided to them on Oct. 6 ... closing on Oct. 20 with a project start date of potentially mid-November, and substantial completion scheduled for Nov. 1 of 2021,” said Wiley. “The dates might vary a little bit as we go forward with the tender package, but generally that's what we're looking at.”
The project involves improvement of the main drainage channel to convey storm water flows from the town to the proposed storm water management facility; upgrade the culverts crossing at 96 Ave. and 113A St. as well as 96 Ave. and 108 St.; upgrade the drainage channel along the west side of 96 Ave. and construct a new storm water management facility in SW-7-60-24-W4.
Heather Stocking, TownandCountryToday.com
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