The Village of Telkwa is one step closer to getting a water tower.
During Monday’s council meeting, it was announced that the grant for the engineering and archaeological assessment for the site of the water tower was approved.
“Good news this morning, we finally did get the official notification from the province and the federal government that the agreement is signed for the clean water and waste water fund grant … I think it’s a precedent, I don’t know if it’s ever happened before where a municipal government basically said look, this is not a fair process and took the province and the feds to task for it and got them to backpedal and go and do the right thing so credit to them, it’s the right thing to do,” Mayor Darcy Repen said.
The grant will cover 83% of the cost for the engineering and archaeological assessment and the village will foot the remaining 17% which is equivalent to around $34,000 for the assessment.
The assessment usually takes between 3-5 field days followed by around 30 days for a report to be written up, but that depends on what is found, Councillor Brad Layton stated.
“I would expect that they’ll have no problem getting it done this summer,” he said.
The location that has been selected for the water tower is Troback Hill. But, that is not set in stone until the survey of the land is complete.
“That’s pending the results of the archaeological assessment. I’m confident … we have already done the stage one, there were indications that led us to need a stage two archaeological assessment, but nothing that indicated we were going to find something that would cause the tower to move,” Repen said.
“I’m glad we have the funding and the peace of mind to know that we can move forward with that first stage,” he added.