GRAVEL PROGRAM AND DUST CONTROL APPLICATION

We at the RM of Ste. Anne are proud to carry on the work started by dedicated community members in creating and maintaining this park for all to enjoy for years to come.

As the Giroux Heritage Park is located around the Giroux Fire Hall, this celebration also recognized and honoured the Adams, Hornan, and Plett families, representing the first volunteers who were instrumental in establishing this department. They all served for many years, and sacrificed much for the benefit of Giroux and our surrounding communities.

A bench was dedicated to these founding members of the Giroux Fire Department.

This year’s Gravel Program started after the May long weekend and is slated to finish mid-July. The annual gravel program involves the graders preparing the roads, then gravel being laid and spread, and finished with an application of dust control. This program can only begin once the frost is completely out of the ground, which means that the start date can vary significantly from year to year.

In the first phase of preparing the roads, our equipment will sometimes “pull-up” the sides of the gravel roads by moving the materials that have been pushed to the sides over the past year back in the center of the road. This is done with the intent of saving and reusing the material rather than having it deposited in the bottom of the ditches, negatively impacting our drainage systems.

For the second phase, the municipality choses a few different contractors to haul and apply gravel to our roads. For this purpose, the Municipality is divided into 4 zones, with contracts awarded for one or two zones per contractor to haul and spread the gravel. Work is managed by completing one zone prior to moving onto the next if one contractor has multiple zones.

The final phase of our gravel program is the application of dust control. This is done by contracting a company to apply magnesium chloride onto the road surface in target areas, in accordance with our Dust Control policy.

The Municipality would like to acknowledge some challenges with dust control this year. There is currently only one provider of dust control services in our part of the province, and as a result, scheduling in relation to the graveling process can be very difficult. The Municipal Public Works team is exploring options to avoid further challenges in future years. Additionally, weather and equipment failures are also challenges that affect the timely implementation of dust control.

Finally, in addition to regular maintenance work, other road work is also being done beyond the annual graveling and dust control programs to improve the quality of our roads. This year has been quite bad for frost boils throughout the Municipality in large part due to the thaw/freeze/thaw cycle that we experienced during the transition from Winter to Spring 2023. This frost boil repair work is being prioritized, but please reach out the Municipal office with any concerns.

As part of the Municipality’s Climate Action Plan, the RM is happy to announce the full launch of our Commercial Recycling Pilot Program. Currently, all residential households can bring their recyclables to one of our depots. However, any non-residential locations with the municipality would have to arrange for their own recycling services, which can be expensive and a deterrent to recycling.

Working with our current residential service provider, the Municipality has launched a program available at a reduced rate. In doing so, we hope to make recycling a more accessible option for our local businesses, divert more waste from the landfill and help our environment at the same time.

This program, unique to our Municipality, consists of several different collection options to give options based on the recycling needs of each business or non-residential operation.

For more information, or to sign up for the program, please contact the municipal office directly, or email cao@rmofsteanne.com.