City's Water Grant proposal applications are in the pipeline

Director of Operations Richard Pucci
providing a presentation on two
grants the City is seeking for the city's
water infrastructure

The theme of grant applications made for a portion of Monday's City Council session, with Richard Pucci, the city's Director of Operations providing Council members with some background related to a pair of grant applications towards Federal/Provincial programs that the City is working on as they head towards a November deadline for interested communities.

The first of the topics that were addressed involved the Woodworth Dam proposal, with Council offering their support to the City's quest to pursue that grant under the Clean Water and Wastewater Fund.

On the first grant option, Councillor Randhawa inquired as to whether this request would conflict with any other grant requests underway, with Mr. Pucci advising that there would be no conflict.

As part of his overview of the city's water supply concerns he added that that the City has already received funding for the first phase of the Water supply project, and would be putting that out for tender shortly.

Council heard of the plans from the City to apply for a grant to replace
the Woodworth Dam which provides the city's drinking water supply

The Woodworth dam issue was the subject of an information video by the City earlier this year, which outlined some of the challenges and upgrades needed.

The Mayor took advantage of the discussion on Monday evening to once again call attention to a recent article in the Northern View, which questioned whether the City had missed a funding opportunity at its recent visit to the UBCM convention.

As we noted on the blog in September, at that time, the province had rolled out a large number of infrastructure projects that were moving forward, with only a few destined for the Northwest, none for the North Coast.

Mayor Brain used a few minutes of the Monday night session to provide his own clarification for the record on the issue, noting that the projects that the paper had noted were already in motion and the City had not missed out on any funding opportunities, adding that the City is moving forward with this current application which has a deadline date of November 23rd.

On the theme of grant applications and how the city approaches them, Mayor Brain in somewhat of a cutting fashion, noted that the city does know how to apply for grants and that he believes that there will be a clarification issued on the subject in the Wednesday paper.

That may be a deadline that has yet to be met, as the only item of note from the Wednesday releases from the Northern View provided very basic information related to the grant requests, with neither a clarification, or notice of correction related to the original item indicated in the original article and accompanying editorial piece.

On the Second grant request, Mr. Pucci outlined the challenges that the city faces in bringing its water supply to the population on Kaien Island, observing that the underwater pipes have only a forty year lifespan and to address those issues the City will apply for a grant to replace the submarine line making use of the Clean Water and Wastewater Fund opportunity available at the moment.

Council also  offered their support towards that motion to make an application. As noted by Mr. Pucci, the deadline for the applications is November 23rd, however Council was provided no timeline as to when the final decision on their grant applications will be delivered.

The full discussion can be reviewed from the City's Video archive starting at the 48 minute mark.





An extended look at the topic can be found on our City Council Timeline here.

For more items related to infrastructure issues can be examined here, while more background on items of interest from Prince Rupert City Council can be found on our Discussion Archive page here.