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By Curtis Galbraith

Drilling increase, firefighting among the many topics covered in State of the County Address

Jun 5, 2018 | 2:43 PM

The Reeve of the County of Grande Prairie talked about a big increase in drilling activity during the State of the County address. 

Reeve Leanne Beaupre says the County has seen a combined 141 drill rig, service rig, and well service moves combined so far in 2018. There were 105 well servicing permits in all of 2017 and 12 in 2015.

Beaupre says the County is confident it will continue to see investment in this area because of the liquids-rich natural gas found in the Montney and Duvernay areas.

“It is something that continues to be marketable. There’s lots of diversification in the area as well and I think that helps and contributes to the overall growth that we’ve seen.”

Beaupre says the crime rate in the County of Grande Prairie is half what it was in 2015. She credits the hiring of new RCMP officers for the decrease.

“The people that are working within the specialized units, when they report back to us on a quarterly basis, they actually update us on the files they’ve been working on, and we’ve really seen that benefit of having invested in them.”

Beaupre also spoke about the need to twin Highway 40. She says even though she lives close to that road she tries to avoid driving on 40 as much as possible.

“It is a safety concern, but it’s actually the number of vehicles that are on the road, it’s not necessarily the drivers themselves, it’s just by pure, sheer numbers that you see on there. If at any time the bridge happens to go down and traffic in that area comes to a stall, nothing happens on either side of the river at that point.”

Beaupre says the County also wants to see the rest of Highway 43 to the BC border twinned. She adds they are also continuing advocate for improvements at the junction of Highways 43 and 733 near Bezanson.

A number of topics related to firefighting also came up. 

Beaupre says construction of a new fire hall in La Glace will start this summer and that a new fire chief would be hired for Sexsmith.

She adds fire mitigation work will also be done along Bear Creek south and east of the city.  

“We’ve had a lot of drought conditions and so we have some dead and standing trees and a lot of the area south of Grande Prairie has a lot of deadfall on the ground. So, it’ll be a process of removing that deadfall and then getting rid of it and taking down the dead trees as well.”

Beaupre also talked about new water lines being built to the west county area. She says the line that will be built to Wembley and Dimsdale from Grande Prairie, a project set to start this summer, will be oversized so that it can be extended to Beaverlodge, Hythe, and Horse Lake First Nation sometime in the future. When that is done will depend on funding and when it is needed.

Beaupre also talked about the continuing push for a new hospital in Beaverlodge. She says she is confident there will be a new one as part of the new regional hospital system. She adds will be the job of local people to continue to put pressure on government.

 

 

by Curtis Galbraith