Community Infrastructure

Disposal Waste Transfer Stn.
Disposal Waste Transfer Station

Water Treatment Plant

 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