A safe stable supply of water is important to build community, and Starland County is looking at making this a reality for more residents. 
In the October 24 edition of the Mail, Starland County advertised for people who are interested in joining on to a water project to see if there is interest
“Our objective is to find out if there are people who are still looking to be hooked to a municipal water system,” said Starland CAO Ross Rawlusyk. “We have built the main areas of demand we had shown initially, such as Munson and Craigmyle North. We already have a system east of Craigmyle and east of Delia on the original lines we built.
We do have some areas where we don’t have a line extended yet and we want to get some indication if there might be some interest.”
He said the ad has been effective, and a number of residents have been in contact to learn more about the possibilities.
“We are getting strong interest so far,” said Rawlusyk. “Initially what we are out to do is get a good list of people. We will take lists and names until the end of the first week of November.”
He said they will begin to look at where the interest is coming from to see if there are pockets or clusters of populations.
“Once we have all that in we’ll plot them on a map and see what kind of grouping we have, see where they are in relation to existing infrastructure,” Rawlusyk said.
He said from this they will look at developing an initial service plan. This could include drawing out areas of interest, looking at soil composition and some of the environmental works on the project lines.
The county wants to be ready if funding comes available.
“We want this available in the event there is another infrastructure program,” said Rawlusyk. “FCM (Federation of Canadian Municipalities) has been lobbying on behalf of municipalities pretty strongly for another ongoing infrastructure program. The last program, Building Canada, actually expires in March 2014, so FCM is pushing for a continuation of that type of program. The federal Minster of Infrastructure has kind of indicated they are at least looking at a program so we are hopeful it will happen.”
