TUESDAY
S I N C E
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
1 8 9 5 Nitehawks in Nelson for Game 4
Vol. 118, Issue 32
110
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Page 11
INCLUDING H.S.T.
PROUDLY SERVING THE COMMUNITIES OF ROSSLAND, WARFIELD, TRAIL, MONTROSE, FRUITVALE & SALMO
City has the cash to purchase airport
Food scraps program could lighten load at dump BY TIMOTHY SCHAFER Times Staff
BY TIMOTHY SCHAFER Times Staff
The city has enough cash squirrelled away in reserves that it could buy the Trail Regional Airport outright when negotiations for its sale conclude, says one city councillor. Robert Cacchioni said the purchase of the airport and its lands from the Regional District of Kootenay Boundary (RDKB) would be a capital acquisition by the City of Trail, and would require no borrowing. The purchase of the airport would be funded out of the land reserve fund and some other surpluses the city had built up, said Cacchioni. “No we don’t,” have to borrow funds, he said, adding that the sale of the airport could go through if it was amenable to both sides. The negotiations on the sale are still moving forward, he noted, but the land and facility requires an appraisal before numbers are discussed. The property was originally bought by the RDKB from Teck Trail Operations for $1.5 million. Cacchioni said the airport budget was set at status quo at the East End Service (EES) meeting Feb. 19 with the only big ticket item being the paving of the air strip stopways. The project was supposed to be done in conjunction with the Ministry of Transportation last year but was delayed. Cacchioni hoped there would be resolution to negotiations on the airport before the project was set to begin in August. “Then the city would negotiate for that particular paving,” he said. It was the issue of the paving that was one of the final straws in the city’s dealings with its other EES partners—including Rossland, Warfield, Fruitvale, Montrose, Area A and Area B—when the project was rejected last year. After receiving no support for an airport service review in late November, Cacchioni said the city was still committed to expansion of the airport. And then, fuelled by the impasse over what had been characterized as a lack of support for the airport by the other regional district partners in the service, the city began pursuing the purchase of the airport from the RDKB in January.
SHERI REGNIER PHOTO
Jessie Hendrigan, volunteer with CiB, displayed a sample banner in Little Scotland (McLean Street in East Trail) last week. Banners of traditional family tartans are now on sale at city hall in Trail, and will be hung along Gyro Park walkway this spring as a theme to the 2013 CiB international competition.
Trail honours its Scottish roots BY SHERI REGNIER Times Staff
Auld bonnie tartans will be the highlight of this year’s Trail Community in Bloom (CiB) theme. Starting this spring, CiB will honour the Scottish heritage in Trail by transforming the Gyro Park walkway into “Avenue of the Clans.” Banners made from the tartan patterns of Trail’s Scottish pioneer families will be hung from pathway light posts. Originally, CiB planned to feature the banners in a section of East Trail known as “Little Scotland,” however
the plan had to be revised after it was determined that the Fortis power poles that line those streets were off limits, said CiB volunteer Jessie Hendrigan. After the first bridge was built in 1912, Scottish immigrants moved across the water to settle in the down-river end of East Trail. “The bottom of snake hill to McQuarrie (street) used to be called “Little Scotland,” said Hendrigan. “All the streets in this area have Scottish names.” In her research of the area’s See BANNERS, Page 3
A new pilot program could reduce the amount of waste going into the Trail dump and give something back to the environment. The food scraps program in Grand Forks has reportedly kept up to 70 per cent of waste out of its landfill over the last year. Now the project could be implemented across the regional district, including Greater Trail’s McElvey Creek Landfill. The project was popular in Grand Forks and composted meat, fruit and vegetables into soil. When the East End Services (EES) committee—that includes the communities of Trail, Warfield, Montrose, Rossland, Fruitvale and Areas A and B—looked at the amount of waste saved from the landfill the idea was adopted for consideration. “If we can reduce the waste going to the dump by 50 per cent … you have now extended the life of the dump by 60 years,” said Robert Cacchioni, the city’s representative on the EES committee. And with the current dump expected to be full in 30 years—and a new dump cost in the range of $300 million—the new project could be worth tens of millions of dollars to extend the life of the landfill, said Cacchioni. “It’s not only important environmentally, but it’s valuable in terms of the economy because you are saving a fortune,” he said. The project could be introduced within the next year in some parts of the region. Food scraps material would be used to enhance regional district and municipal lands. The scraps would be sorted by homeowners and would go into a separate bin from garbage. As well, the EES committee will be considering putting in a second access to the landfill, creating a berm along the backside of the landfill between it and the high school. Approved by the regional district’s environmental committee, the new access and berm could cost up to $2.5 million, paid for from across the regional district. The new access would be further up the highway past the current entrance. It would go in where some earth material was previously removed from the side hill. It would solve the problem of where people are turning, eliminating congestion, and it would give the dump more room on the side near the high school, giving it around 70 years of life.
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