Community Infrastructure
Disposal Waste Transfer Station
Water Treatment Plant
COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE REPORT – OCTOBER 2009
This program includes Public Works and Maintenance; Roads; Community Buildings; Electrical Systems; Fire Protection; Water and Sanitation Systems.
Roads
- We graveled the main roads and some of the secondary roads
- The rain this year has made it difficult to keep up with road maintenance
- Brush cutting along the roads is ongoing as a winter project
- We purchased some calcium chloride for dust control
- An application was sent to INAC requesting $258,000 to assist with upgrading of 10 kilometres of the main reserve road. The total project cost is #375,000. The Sturgeon Lake commitment to the project is $116,000.
Sanitation Systems
- The Solid Waste Transfer Station is operating reasonably well. The garbage is sorted and hauled off the reserve
- Now that we have had the station operating two years, we are still negotiating with Inac for more funding based on actual operating costs
- Roads bans affected our garbage hauling this spring. We couldn’t haul large garbage bins during that period.
- Next year the West Sewage Lagoon will be expanded and one of the West Sewage Lift Stations will be upgraded
Water System
- Water quality monitoring is done on a regular basis
- We require our water system operators to be properly certified to operate our water system. One of our operators has now been certified at Level 2 and another has been certified at Level I
- Cistern cleaning was done this summer
- We replaced a number of old cisterns
BISON PROJECT
- The prices paid for bison are improved a lot over past years
- We are working on our bison jerky development and sales
FIRE SUPPRESSION CREW
- We negotiated two fire crews for this year
- The crews worked on forest and grass fires during the summer season
- They carried out a lot of work on the reserve when not on fires, such as cutting brush along roads, controlled burns, tree planting and working on elders’ yards
FIRE DEPARTMENT
- Wesley Ballantyne is the Fire Chief
- We will be doing more training this winter on structural fire fighting and will also do Basic Fire Fighting training for wild fires
- The Sturgeon Lake Fire Department hosted and competed in the First Nations Fire Competitions this summer. We had 6 teams competing
COMMUNITY BUILDINGS
- When the new clinic is completed, we will get the existing building to use as a Band Office
STURGEON LAKE COMMUNITY CENTRE
- The new Sturgeon Lake Community Centre was completed last December 2008
- The construction project went very well and provided employment for a number of our members for several months
- We have hired a custodian for the building
- We purchased fit up items for the building including tables,chairs, sound syste, kitchen appliances, dishes, janitorial equipment and so on
- We’re working to improve the acoustics of the building this month
- We have purchased some Bingo equipment and have other items to purchase. Some of these items still have to be installed
- More yard work needs to be done next summer – possibly paving