FRIDAY
S I N C E
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JUNE 1, 2012 Vol. 117, Issue 107
110
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Senior volunteer group helps with church renos Page 2
INCLUDING H.S.T.
PROUDLY SERVING THE COMMUNITIES OF
ROSSLAND, WARFIELD, TRAIL, MONTROSE, FRUITVALE & SALM SALMO
Water flowing from new reservoir
ARTIST AT WORK
City pleased with completion of $2.1 million project BY GUY BERTRAND Times Staff
With a turn of the tap, a staple of life in Greater Trail received an important upgrade earlier this month. At the beginning of May, water began to flow from the brand new $2.1 million Coleman Street Reservoir. “We don’t see projects this big very often,” Trail Councilor Gord DeRosa on Thursday. “This was a matter of replacing aging infrastructure with state of the art.” The new structure replaces the original opentop concrete pit reservoir, which was over 70 years old and posed the obvious health and maintenance factors. “The age of the old reservoir, the unreliability of water quality, there were so many unknowns,” explained John Howes, an engineering technician for the City of Trail. “We were being very proactive on this one.” The new reservoir, which holds 3.5 million litres of water, roughly the same as the old one, will service the West Trail corridor and into portions of downtown.
See TAX, Page 3 TIMOTHY SCHAFER PHOTO
Big bill for speedy water main repairs
This was no Michaelangelo-esque pose for Trail-based painter Nevio Santarossa as he looked to put the finishing touches on the paint around a window. The house Santarossa was painting on Third Avenue — with his partner Richie and his dog, Lulu — had been moved to the East Trail location 50 years ago when they widened the road to make way for the new bridge.
Census paints Trail with silver touch
BY TIMES STAFF Dealing with a broken water main this week has proven to be a drain on the City of Trail’s coffers. City staff worked through Monday night and Tuesday morning to fix a ruptured main that broke through the pavement at the intersection of Victoria Street and Cedar Avenue. “It’s going to be an expensive repair,” admitted Larry Abenante, the city’s Public Works manager. “The overtime, the asphalt repairs, it’s going to hit $30,000 to $40,000 for sure. I don’t know what the paving costs will come in at.” He said the paving was scheduled to be done Thursday but with rain in the morning, it was put on hold for a few days. Although traffic has resumed without delay on Victoria Street, Cedar Avenue remains closed until at least Saturday. “I’m keeping it closed until I feel comfortable the roads are repaired,” said Abenante, who is hoping the street will be back in service by Saturday afternoon.
IT’S TIME
Statistics show Trail has higher population of seniors than average while Rossland has younger crowd BY TIMOTHY SCHAFER Times Staff
They don’t call it the Silver City for nothing. Trail has one of the highest senior populations in the Kootenays, second only to Creston, with a total population of 1,930 people — or 25.1 per cent — 65 years of
age or older, according to figures released by Statistics Canada Tuesday. In fact, Trail was second in the median age category, again to Creston, with an average age of 49.8 years (Creston was 55.2), and had the second highest per capita of octogenarians and above at 9.3 per cent (Creston at 11 per cent). As a result, Trail had the lowest proportion of young people in the zero-to-14 category with 13 per cent of the population, or 1,005 people. Over 62 per cent of the city’s population was in the work-
ing class age group (15-64). A little further afield in the Golden City, Rossland led the Kootenays with the youngest median age at 39.9 years, edging out youthful Nelson that came in at 40.9. The mountain kingdom had a perfect even split of male and females, with 1,780 on each side. In Trail, women outnumber men by 450, or 4,065 to 3,615. As a point of fact, gender population favours women in Kootenay municipalities, with women making up 52 per cent of the population on average in most places,
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including Trail. However, in rural areas, the scale slips back the other way with there being more men residing in the Kootenay countryside. Trail’s median age was also far higher than both the B.C. average of 41.9 years, and the national average of 40.6. The Regional District of Kootenay Boundary had a median of 33 per cent seniors overall (6.715 people), higher than neighbouring Central Kootenay regional district that had 19 per cent senior’s population (11,375 people).
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