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Water plant cost overruns By Jackie Lieuwen Houston Today
CHRISTMAS Creations
Jackie Lieuwen/Houston Today
Julia Simpson, Regal Gifts, sells Christmas ornaments at the Sarendipity Sale last weekend. People crowded the mall with creative and hand-made crafts and treats for the Christmas season. See page 10 for more.
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The Houston Water Treatment Plant is costing the District nearly $43,000 extra. McElhanney Consulting Services met with Houston Chief Administrative Officer Michael Glavin to discuss the extra work and costs. The biggest part was for extra groundwork which cost $26,161. They also painted support columns with an epoxy coating to protect them from corrosion, costing $7,238. Glavin says they bought more tiebars for $3,272 and got foundation wall insulation for $6,310. Director of Finance William Wallace says the water treatment plant budget has $330,000 contingency built in and is “in good shape,” using less than 15 percent to date. Extra work like this is normal, said CAO
Water Treatment Plant to be up and running by June 2015.
Glavin. “With any project that you work under, there’s always things that crop up.” He says there’s no such thing as a perfect design plan, and often “conditions change or items are simply overlooked.” The Water Treatment Plant is expected to be complete by March 2015, then water pipes will be cleaned and everything should be up and running by June 2015.
LNG impact on northwest “going to be tremendous” By Jackie Lieuwen Houston Today
Regional District Director Rob Newell says LNG offers little to gain in this area and much to lose. Director for the Houston Rural area (Area “G”), Newell says he talks to LNG personnel regularly.
Two staff at the Regional District of B u l k l e y - N e c h a ko (RDBN) are working with and monitoring the proposed pipelines. Newell says they sit on advisory boards and assessment boards and get information almost daily from pipelines about proposed route
changes or permit applications. RDBN “hasn’t made any decisions yet. It hasn’t taken a position on LNG like Smithers has,” Newell said. “We are not here to start it or to stop it, we’re here to make sure that the well being of the inhabitants of
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this area is looked after.” Newell says he measures all projects against three pillars of prosperity. He asks (1) is it economically profitable? (2) Is it ecological sustainable? And (3) is it socially desirable? Newell says the LNG pipelines don’t
have a social licence in his area. He told Enbridge that if they’re clearing 5,000 metres of forest on either side of the pipeline, they need to save the wood we consider salvageable not what they consider salvageable. He says they need to minimize what’s
burned, deliver the timber to our mills and chip the leftover. “We don’t have much to gain from LNG, we have more to lose actually,” Newell said. “If any of the proposed projects come through, the impact in the northwest is going to
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be tremendous. It’s going to impact our landfills, it’s going to impact our water and our forests. “We have to have some control over that, and the equity that’s coming back from these is minimal compared to what we’re being asked to sacrifice.”
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