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Northern
www.northernsentinel.com
Volume 57 No. 46
RTA to limit their spending in 2013
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
1.34 INCLUDES TAX
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Smelter modernization will see a slight delay Cameron Orr Rio Tinto Alcan is easing up on the throttle for their modernization project, but construction will still proceed at an accelerated rate from 2012. In a call to local media, manager of corporate affairs and community relations Colleen Nyce and the Kitimat Modernization Project project director Michel Lamarre explained that the global economy has forced the aluminum giant to cut costs company-wide in reaction to a poor economy. Locally, that means that their modernized smelter’s online date will be pushed back, and while Lamarre said it isn’t a drastic schedule change he didn’t know yet what their anticipated start-up date is. “We are in discussion with our engineering firm...there will be a delay which will not be a major delay,” he said. Essentially what this means here is that spending won’t spike as high as it would have in 2013. They didn’t say precisely how much money was being cut, but 2013’s construction bill is now estimated at just over a billion dollars, compared to just under a billion dollars for 2012. The number of man-hours needed to complete the project will remain the same, said Lamarre. So the work will just be more stretched out, rather than the construction peaking in terms of worker numbers next year as originally anticipated. “In 2012... the project was extremely active,” said Lamarre. “I can tell you in 2013 we’ll do more than that.” Timing works out as well because Lamarre notes construction efficiency goes down in the winter anyway. The CBC had reported early in October that Rio Tinto Alcan may have been looking at opening up collective agreements in their Quebec regions as a cost cutting measure, however Nyce emphasized that no such action is being taken in B.C., in light of their signing in July with CAW Local 2301 in Kitimat for a 5-year contract. Meanwhile the future still looks good for aluminum, as Lamarre points out that analysts are showing that there is likely to be a worldwide growth in demand of six per cent, year-over-year. As for the technical components of the smelter rebuild, he said it will be all the same technologies planned for the plant and there will be no changes to how it is built based on this delay. The price of aluminum has dropped over the course of the past month, Oct. 1 to Nov. 5. Starting at 94 cents (USD) on Oct. 1, it was hovering around 86 cents by last Friday.
You know the expression “it’d be nice to be a fly on the wall for that conversation”? Well, they might be referring to something a little more subtle than Kane Danis here, who was duct taped to the gym wall during Mount Elizabeth Middle School’s Gym Riot, in a game of Fly on the Wall. An inter-school competition between them and Mount Elizabeth Secondary School, organized by the grade 11/12 PE class, sought to solve the question of who could raise more for the Terry Fox Run. MESS raised $951.82 through hot dog sales, collections and other means. MEMS, on the other hand, raised $1,191.91, making them the clear winner. Their reward was an Oct. 26 Gym Riot, where 288 middle school students put their principals through some challenges before playing some games for themselves, including the one shown above. Photo submitted
Kitimat campus sees new life Cameron Orr If John Ross has anything to say about it, Kitimat will be seeing a rejuvenated college campus soon. Already he said new programs will be starting in February, a collaboration with the high school to bring an industrial millwright program. From there he hopes to bring welding, and more. John Ross is the community/industry/education liaison for Kitimat’s Northwest Community College Campus, and his job now is to essentially bring some former glory back to the small campus. “We are starting to see programs come down here,” he said of the Febru-
ary trades programs. He said that as interest for programs is brought to him he’ll get to work trying to bring them to reality. It will take a collaborative effort and he said it’s not a competition between other organizations — namely the Kitimat Valley Institute — over who offers programs, but rather it’s about something being offered at all. “It doesn’t really matter who delivers a program. What matters is that a program gets delivered,” he said. Councillors were happy to hear positive news coming from the campus, and in replying to questions, Ross said that he actually hopes the campus proves too
small for all the programs they might eventually offer. “If I can show a need they will hire the instructors,” said Ross. “Our campus right now is not closed, it’s moth-balled, because it needed to be rebuilt. It needed to be reinvigorated. That’s what I’m trying to do down here. As I accomplish that, staff, faculty and students will be back in that college. We do not want to move the college out of Kitimat, we do not want to leave Kitimat.” As programs get developed, he also said that the plan is to provide services so students will find work after graduation, rather than just forgetting about them after they’re through the system.
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Kitimat’s million dollar winner ... page 7