Heather Latter
Municipal leaders from the west end of the district were pleased with 2015 in the respective communities and are looking forward to the year ahead.
Work on New Gold’s Rainy River Project was the highlight in the Township of Chapple, where the mine is located.
Reeve Peter Van Heyst noted there was quite a lot of building construction in Chapple in 2015.
“We issued over $40 million in building permits,” he said, adding a lot of that work is related to New Gold.
“We’re pleased with all the progress on the Rainy River Project,” Van Heyst enthused.
“We have a good relationship with New Gold.
“We haven’t seen any other economic spin-offs yet,” he conceded, adding maybe that’s something that’s coming in the future.
One thing that will change there this year due to the mine is the relocation of Highway 600, which is set to be open soon.
The townships of Alberton and La Vallee, meanwhile, also are hopeful they’ll see some benefits from New Gold’s Rainy River Project in the coming year and beyond.
“We hope to get a few more residents from the mine,” noted Alberton Reeve Mike Hammond.
“There is land for sale.”
“There’s certainly employment there, but maybe long-term we’ll see some new homes going up,” echoed La Vallee Reeve Ken McKinnon.
“They plant an entirely different seed in the mind of people and all of a sudden they start spending money, they’ll start building homes, expanding their homes, and that generates more assessment for the municipality,” McKinnon added.
That, in turn, would generate more dollars to help maintain roads and services in the township.
“We’re just in year one so I don’t think we’ve seen the long-term benefits yet,” McKinnon admitted.
“But as long as the mine continues to operate at the pace it is at now, I think we’re going to see a real transition to the benefit,” he stressed.
Emo Mayor Jack Siemens also believes the mine development has been beneficial to his community so far.
“The mine has been a real boom to the whole community here [with] the influx of new people coming in,” he noted.
“And hopefully the people moving here will bring their families, make it a bigger and better community.”
Another positive change that happened this past year was the amalgamated fire chief services between the townships of La Vallee, Emo, and Chapple.
“We’re quite excited about it,” McKinnon said. “It gives us a fire chief that is pretty well full-time, part-time for these three communities.
“And I think we’re probably, down the road, going to be able to save some money in the account of utilizing the same expertise, training time, and equipment,” he added, though stressing the amalgamation only is in the preliminary stages at this time.
Josh Colling was hired to fill the position and McKinnon said he brings a lot of expertise to the job.
“Each community had a part-time fire chief but it was so difficult because there wasn’t enough money involved in it so [the fire chiefs] had to seek employment elsewhere or it was somebody who was retired [which] is not good long-term because they don’t want a full-time commitment to something,” he reasoned.
“Hopefully, this is going to work out better.”
In Alberton, they received a $52,000 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
“We are going to put that into the playground and get a net climber for the kids, and some new picnic tables and benches,” Hammond said.
“Believe it or not, that comes to $52,000.”
Hammond noted the township will just have to pay for the installation.
“I think we can handle that,” he remarked. “The kids seem to use the park quite a bit so it’s a good deal.”
Hammond added they applied for the grant and were happy to receive it, with installation to begin in the spring.
Neither La Vallee or Alberton have any capital work anticipated for the coming year but Chapple needs a bridge replacement and some firefighting equipment—if funding becomes available.
“Municipalities are so dependent on our funding partners provincially and federally so we don’t have a lot of flexibility,” McKinnon noted.
“I think it has always been a problem, especially moreso in recent years,” he added.
“We have to continue our existing services with less funding or tax our rate payers heavily . . .
“You need money to do projects, plain and simple,” McKinnon stressed.
“Hopefully, we’ll get a few dollars where we can do some capital projects in our community, but at this point that is unseen,” he said.
“I just hope that we can continue to provide at least as good of services for our ratepayers as we have in the past.”
Siemens, meanwhile, noted they had a very busy 2015 in Emo.
“We saw the streets completed and paved, just like the water and sewer, and hopefully in 2016 we can get some more grants and finish up Emo altogether so that we’ll have all new water and sewer,” he remarked.
“We also did the water treatments upgrades,” Siemens added, estimating there was about $2 million put into the upgrades of the new electrical panels and pumps.
“We did the lagoon, too, that was started,” he noted.
“A much-needed upgrade, saw that to completion, functioning very well.”
In addition, all the old streetlights were replaced with LED lighting. As well, Emo purchased some much needed equipment, such as a new snowplow.
“It’s been an interesting year and I look forward to next year,” Siemens said.
“There are projects hopefully on the horizon that we can deal with and if we can bring some of them to fruition, that would be great.
“We’ve got a good council,” he added. “We all work well together and like to work well with other communities from Fort Frances all the way down to Rainy River.
“It’s nice to get together [so] we can share information and share the knowledge to make this area big,” Siemens stressed.
(With files from Cameron Penney)
