Disaster recovery funding coming to six Peace region communities

Feb 28, 2019 | 1:41 PM

Six communities throughout our region will be receiving over 4.8 million dollars in funding from the Disaster Recovery Program after being previously denied.

Energy Minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd says the places set to receive funding include the MDs of Fairview, Peace, Smoky River, Spirit River, Birch Hills County and the Village of Rycroft.

She says a bulk of the money is going towards helping communities fix their damaged infrastructure after last spring’s overland flooding.

“Each one will be different, but I can tell you that almost 100 percent of the damages in the areas were municipal infrastructure like roads and bridges,” says McCuaig-Boyd. “And if there were individuals affected, Municipal Affairs would be reaching out to them, but the bulk of this will go to Municipal infrastructure.”

The amount of money each community is receiving are:

MD of Smoky River: $3,360,000
MD of Fairview: $714,000
MD of Spirit River: $470,000
Birch Hills County: $242,000
MD of Peace: $47,000
Village of Rycroft: $29,000

McCuaig-Boyd says funding will be available again if we have a similar spring this year.

“This is something we budget for each year. We hope there won’t be disasters, but we are prepared. I can tell you that Alberta is one of the most prepared provinces in Canada. We’re certainly prepared to help, even though we hope these disasters don’t occur, we are ready for them if they do.”

The decision to give funding to the six communities was originally denied, but McCuaig-Boyd says after appeals by the communties were made and studies on last year’s snowmelt were completed, the new information was enough to grant disaster recovery funding.

McCuaig-Boyd says the money is going to be distributed as soon as possible.

by Justin Dionne