Your road may become calcium-free this summer, West Nipissing.
Spreading calcium helps to suppress dust along gravel roads. The municipal council has decided to cut the service as a cost-saving measure. Low-traffic roads will be affected, specifically, those rural roads with two homes or fewer.
No through roads will be affected, however, the list is long, with 32 roads cut from service. Around 29.5 kilometers will be removed from the calcium spreader’s list, saving the municipality just over $28,000.
That figure doesn’t include saved labour costs or the wear on the machines. That’s just for calcium. Last year’s total cost for calcium was $328,830.
Elizabeth Henning, West Nipissing’s Director of Infrastructure, noted in her report to council, “While this would result in more dust on roads with only one or two homes, the dust is primarily being created by the residents of those roads and not through traffic, which means a minimal amount of dust is being created in comparison to higher volume roads.”
Here are the roads council has cut from the calcium list (in alphabetical order):
Ashburton, Bellefeuille, Bowes, Burnham, Cayouette, Chretien, Claude, Corbett, Coyote Ridge, Dalcourt, Deer Lake, de la Montee, Dennonville, Douglas, Dumoulin, Ecole, Fortier, Fraser, Fryer, Haven, Herard, Hydro Dam, Leblanc, Marier, Morley’s, Old Aubin (south of Hillman Road), Old North, Patenaude, Putnam, Remillard, Stewart, and Sunny Ridge.
For those with homes or camps on those roads, will your taxes go down? No.
The municipality’s Chief Administrative Officer, Jay Barbeau, elaborated, “Your taxes are based on everything provided, and we’re trying to realign resources so we can appropriately spend the money from the budget that we raise, and this council wants to focus spending to get maximum return for it.”
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.