Woodlands County councillors were split over their May 4 meeting over whether to honour promises made to residents living near the McLeod River tubing site regarding dust control or to hold the line against unbudgeted spending.
Ultimately, county councillors voted 4-3 on a motion to direct administration to proceed with plans to apply calcium dust control treatment on the “put in” road that leads to the McLeod River tubing site.
During the April 20 meeting, Coun. Ron Govenlock had brought up concerns around excessive dust on the tubing site road, which is also known as Cutbank Road.
Coun. Dale Kluin then made a motion to direct administration to provide an estimate for dust control along the Cutbank Road at the May 4 meeting. The motion also called for bringing the county’s Dust Control Policy forward for review.
At the May 4 meeting, director of infrastructure Andre Bachand reported that the current pricing for calcium dust control is 20 cents per litre, and one truckload of 29,000 litres would be necessary to apply dust control to two kilometres of road.
With the road being 2.1 kilometres in length, the cost to apply dust control would be approximately $7,000.
It was also the recommendation of administration that council rescind the county’s Dust Control Policy. While the county had eliminated its dust control program in 2020 as a cost-saving initiative, CAO Gordon Frank said the policy had been left in place, which was an error on administration’s part.
Kluin and Govenlock, who made the motion to proceed with dust control on the tubing site road, both said it didn’t make any sense to drop the policy now.
Coun. Dave Kusch asked if there was any possibility of sharing costs with the Town of Whitecourt. Bachand shot that suggestion down, noting the town was responsible for maintaining the “take-out” roads and they would likely be opposed to sharing further costs.
Coun. Jim Rennie noted that he had received a number of requests for dust control along Range Road 120 and was planning to discuss dust control along that road at the next council meeting.
“I think that our dust control program is something that we need to take another look at,” he said.
Coun. Bruce Prestidge said that the county has to be careful, as applying dust control along the tubing site road means opening up the county to other requests.
He noted that the county had run into problems before with providing dust control for some residents and making others pay for the service.
“We have to go forward carefully with how we do this,” he said.
Coun. Dale McQueen, who voted in favour of the motion, said he recognized Prestidge’s concerns, but they also had to take into account the promises made by previous councils to the seniors living out at that site that calcium would be applied to those roads as long as they lived there.
Finally, mayor John Burrows cautioned council that they embarked on a plan a year and a half ago to try and pull the municipality out of debt and over-spending. He also pointed out that this is the third year that Woodlands County has been unable to collect $3.5 million in tax revenue from oil and gas companies.
Noting that there was no allocation for dust control in the budget, he urged council to at least consider where this money would be taken from, cautioning that they may be getting into the situation of “deficit budgeting," which was partially the reason for the county’s troubled finances.
In the end, Rennie, Govenlock, Kluin and McQueen voted in favour of the motion to apply dust control, while Kusch, Prestidge and Burrows voted against it.
