Bonnyville Area Awarded Over $1 Million in ACP Grants

The Town and the Municipal District (MD) of Bonnyville have been awarded three Alberta Community Partnership (ACP) Grants that total over a million dollars. The grants came thanks to collaboration and support from Bonnyville and surrounding municipalities, including the City of Cold Lake. Mayor of Bonnyville, Gene Sobolewski, says the funding will be used to help move along the waterline project, as well as fine tune the Inter-Municipal Cooperation Program (IMCP) and make upgrades to Gurneyville Road.

The second grant, “is in relation to the waterline, but it’s doing the governance portion,” explains the mayor. The Regional Water Strategy Project grant was also $350,000. “A regional waterline is normally three components. The first one is engineering, design and construction, the second component is the governance, and the third is approval.” as Mayor Sobolewski explains the grant is for the second component. “This component looks at answering a number of questions, such as: whether or not a regional commission will be formed, a regional committee, or part-line company?” The governance portion is not just for the Town’s benefit but will help answer some questions on the City of Cold Lake’s side, explains Mayor Sobolewski, “they’re looking over the options of formation of a utility, so that pays for the consultant and the bottom-line work that needs to be done there.” There also needs to be a water use amendment to draw from the lake so money from this grant will support that process. “There’s still some issues with the impact on the lake, so some of that grant money will be used to alleviate some of those concerns.”

Mayor of Cold Lake, Craig Copeland, says the City is “looking forward to working on that grant. We’re happy that the government supported the grant application. It’s going to look at, not only, the sustainability of the Cold Lake water level as a regional water source; but also the governance of what the entity would look like to supply water regionally.”

“Now that we have funding coming in we’re working on our request for proposals to get some consultants in and get some work going,” Mayor Sobolewski says they are in the very initial stages and anticipates his calendar to have some meetings with Cold Lake scheduled in the near future. “We want to get the requests for proposals put together, have the City review them and then set up some meetings to make sure we’re well on our way.” The MD will also be involved in the process, as well.

The other two grants that come in were partnership grants between the MD and the Town, explains the mayor “The first grant is for preparations of the agreements between the MD and the Town for things like our inter-municipal transfers, and water & sewers,” Mayor Sobolewski says the money is to be used to support the Town and MD’s Regional Servicing Strategy Project, “establishing areas of growth and common development standards. For example, lands that are in the MD [that are being developed] making sure they don’t choke out the town.” The grant was for $350,000. 

The final grant is  for Gurneyville Road, under the IMCP, for $350,000. The MD is already doing upgrades to the roadway, Mayor Sobolewski explains this funding will help the project continue, “come 2017 it’s going to get paved.”