Rossland gets grants for Spokane Street Project
By Rossland Telegraph
Rejoice, Rosslanders! Rossland will receive a sprinkling of money from the federal and provincial governments to help with the Spokane Street infrastructure replacement project. This will help keep our taxes from rising faster and further, and it will make our water supply more secure, and keep us from spending a lot of money treating storm-water instead of just sewage at the treatment plant.
The governments say, “By ensuring that drinking water and wastewater systems are modern, efficient and meet the capacity needs of our communities, the governments of Canada and British Columbia are safeguarding the well-being of Canadian families, protecting our waterways and preserving our ecosystems.” Good. They should be doing those things.
Rossland’s Mayor Kathy Moore says,
“Rossland is absolutely thrilled and grateful to be the recipient of two Clean Water and Wastewater Fund grants. These grants represent a partnership between all three levels of government- the Federal government is contributing 50% of the costs, the Provincial government is providing 33% and the balance, 17% by the City of Rossland. The first project is a major rebuild of Spokane St. We have experienced multiple failures of both the water and sewer lines on Spokane, LeRoi and First Ave. Portions of all of these roads will be addressed in this corridor upgrade. Without this grant we would be obligated to extend this project over 3 or 4 years. That would not be cost efficient or effective. Plus we would risk additional pipe failures”.
“The other grant is for a major Inflow and Infiltration strategy that will help us address the very persistent problem of storm and ground water getting into our sewer lines, thus requiring us to pay to treat water instead of just sewage at the treatment plant in Trail. By systematically addressing these issues wherever they are located throughout our network we can fix the most critical problems first”.
“I am so grateful to the support of all levels of government, including our municipal staff for being “shovel ready” with these important projects. It takes a lot of work to identify critical projects, do the initial engineering and preparation work and write the grants. None of any of that work is a guarantee of success and it takes a strong team to pull it off.”
Here’s to having this entire project pulled off in the near future. A few road disruptions should be no problem — we’re used to that now, aren’t we, and we know it’ll be so much better when the work is done.
