Garden Crescent resident Gary Glewinski wrote on the Grandin, St. Albert Residents Facebook page on Aug. 14 about how he had received a note from bylaw officers about creeping bellflower spotted in his yard. Many other residents chimed in to say they also had those weeds on their land or had received similar notices.
Creeping bellflower is a European perennial known for its heart or lance-shaped leaves, metre-long stems and large, bell-shaped, nodding light purple flowers. It is classified as a noxious weed under the Alberta Weed Control Act, which means landowners must stop its spread if they spot it.
Glewinski said he noticed these flowers show up in his garden this spring and suspects they may have been present last year.
“They looked quite nice,” he said, and the bees loved them, so he left them alone.
City of St. Albert spokesperson Marci Ng said in an email that a resident reported a case of creeping bellflower in Grandin on Aug. 6. When bylaw officers investigated, they found 45 other properties with the weed on Garden and Gladstone crescents and issued notices to each instructing them to remove the weeds.
Glewinski said bylaw officers explained to him why the flowers were a problem and how to remove them, and that he could be fined up to $1,000 if he didn’t do so by Aug. 26. (The city would also remove the weeds and send the bill to the landowner, Ng noted.) He has since dug them up and put them in his brown trash bin.
Creeping bellflower and other weeds are “blooming like crazy this year” in St. Albert on account of all the rain, said city arborist Kevin Veenstra.
“Everyone has it in the older neighbourhoods,” he said, and it’s widespread in Grandin.
Creeping bellflower plants are extremely difficult to eradicate, as they reproduce from both their extensive root system and the 3,000-some seeds they make each year, reports the Alberta Invasive Species Council.
The council recommends hand-pulling these plants and digging up as much of their roots as possible. Veenstra said to put all weed materials in your brown trash cart to prevent these plants from spreading through compost.
Visit abinvasives.ca for more on how to spot and stop invasive weeds.
Waste-to-energy bid
St. Albert has put out a call to have someone build a pilot waste-to-energy plant within city limits.
The City of St. Albert posted a call for bids July 29 on the Alberta Purchasing Connection website to build a pilot-scale waste-to-energy plant in St. Albert.
City council voted last spring to open talks with regional partners on such a plant.
While the city put out a similar call for bids earlier this year and received three submissions, city sustainability initiatives director Kate Polkovsky said in an email that the city had since changed the project’s scope and is now seeking new proposals.
The notice says the city is seeking bids to build a pilot plant that would take “the landfilled portion of waste” and convert it into useable heat and/or electricity. The successful bidder would work with the city to test the plant on various waste mixes and moisture levels for a year, and would also have to provide any elements needed to sort the waste feedstock on site.
City spokesperson Juliann Cashen said in an email that the city did not yet have a budget set for this project, the scale of which would depend on the proposed technology.
Bids for this project close Aug. 20.
