$15 mil for rail yard
Canada’s transportation minister was in Sturgeon County Monday to give a new rail yard a $15-million boost.
Federal Transport Minister Marc Garneau and deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland were in Sturgeon County council chambers on Feb. 10 to announce a $15-million investment into Cando Rail Service’s Sturgeon Terminal.
Announced last December, the 302-acre terminal is now under construction near the Pembina Redwater fractionation plant in eastern Sturgeon County.
Garneau said this $15 million came from the National Trade Corridors Fund, which aims to invest $2.4 billion over 11 years to address bottlenecks along Canada’s trade corridors. This investment would create some 880 construction jobs and help Alberta products get to market more efficiently.
“All Canadians benefit from well-functioning trade corridors that allow us to reach international markets and compete on the world stage,” he said.
“The investments I’ve just announced will make our transportation system stronger and promote long-term prosperity in this region.”
The Sturgeon Terminal will feature about 47 km of track that crews will use to sort up to 1,930 rail cars at a time into shipments to other centres. It also has a direct link to CN’s Rock Yard siding, Garneau noted.
The terminal will be within a few kilometres of the Nutrien fertilizer plant, Pembina’s natural gas plant, and the upcoming Canada Kuwait Petrochemical Corp. plastics plant, all of which produce products that can be shipped by rail.
This project will showcase the Alberta Industrial Heartland’s competitive edge, said Sturgeon County economic development manager Tyler Westover.
“It’s much-needed support for value-added and transportation industries,” he said, and it could advance Cando’s plans to expand this terminal.
Westover said Cando was now moving dirt on the terminal’s construction site, and that residents should expect construction to kick into high gear this spring.
Think solar and shade
A Rivière Qui Barre woman has called on county council to look into the problem of shaded solar panels.
Rivière Qui Barre resident Darlene Clarke spoke to county council Feb. 11 about solar panels.
Clarke said she put solar panels on her trailer home about three years ago and has had issues with a patch of tall, dead trees on a neighbouring lot. Shadows from the trees block the panels in the winter, reducing their output. Clarke said she’s asked the neighbour if the trees could be trimmed, and offered to pay for it, but the neighbour wasn’t interested.
While she didn’t ask for the county to intervene in her case, Clarke said council should consider the issue of shade and solar panels when it examines future building permits.
“This is the future,” she said of solar, and this issue will become more important as solar becomes more common.
Clarke was touching on the idea of solar rights – a question common amongst solar power advocates that asks whether one property owner can block another’s access to sunlight through shading. Jurisdictions such as California have passed laws to prevent property owners from allowing trees to shade a neighbour’s solar panels provided those panels were in place before the trees were planted.
In an interview, county CAO Reegan McCullough said the county’s land-use bylaw did not currently address shade and solar panels, but that it was an issue the county should probably consider.
“These kinds of requests have not been numerous, but we’ll certainly take it back and take a look at it.”
