Thursday, Loraas Recycle made the rounds in Dundurn, rolling out their blue recycling carts.
The town became the latest of area municipalities making the move to curbside recycling collection. The residential recycling program will replace all the big, blue metal bins that comprise the Community Recycling Centre beside Dundurn’s fire hall.
Dundurn Mayor Doug Narraway said his wife notified him immediately Thursday morning when their blue bin arrived in their Dundurn yard. “She just texted me. She’s pretty excited,” he said.
Narraway said he’s heard “only a couple of grumblings” about the move to curbside recycling; instead, “a lot of people are excited” about the switch.
Each residence in Dundurn that has black garbage bin service received a rollout blue cart for their recyclable materials. The blue carts will be picked up biweekly, alternating with the black waste bin collection.
Loraas Recycle uses a single-stream recycling program. People are not required to sort their recyclable materials. Everything is placed in the bin altogether, allowing people to divert more than 50 per cent of their household waste from the landfill.
Narraway’s convinced that once people experience the convenience of no longer having to stockpile their recyclables and then haul the stuff downtown to the metal bins, residents will embrace the change.
“The people I’ve talked to have been really positive about it,” Narraway said, adding that once people realize how much material they can recycle instead of throwing it into the garbage, they’ll be impressed.
The town and the R.M. of Dundurn shared the costs of the Community Recycling Centre, which has been in place for nearly a decade. While it offered residents a place to take their recyclables, Narraway said often times because people from the R.M., Thode, Shields and the town were using the bins, “sometimes they would be so full our people in town couldn’t use them.”
To read more please see the March 3 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

There are several different issues with the delays in grain movement, which is a month to two months behind schedule in this area for getting older contracts cleaned up, but one local farmer doesn’t believe a resolution is coming anytime soon.

“We’re cleaning up our January canola contracts getting to the end of February right now,” said Davidson farmer Rob Stone, noting the delay is also stopping farmers from doing any new contracts for the next few months. “We could have probably had that cleaned up sooner, but the weather didn’t work for us and we weren’t concerned (about) moving at that point. There were a lot of people who jumped in line to make sure they were delivered too, so from our experience it’s not horrible. It was worse and it can get worse again if the railways don’t deliver. They missed two trains in a row at Richardson, so two weeks in a row that there was no cars and (if) you start having that happen on a consistent basis it really affects their capability to do any business.”

Stone said little accountability for the railroads to move the grain volume and honour their service agreements is still only one of the issues with the backlog of grain movement. He said the main problem is the grain companies not pushing hard enough in a public forum for improved service, which would include more railway employees and more engines dropping off cars and picking them up.

“There really hasn’t been a lot of pressure from the grain companies to this point,” he said. “It’s a tough one for sure, but the biggest issue is everyone has got a different reason why the railroads aren’t doing their job or performing to our expectations and the old excuse of it’s winter, it’s cold, that sort of stuff, (well) it’s cold and winter every year. We need to find better solutions (instead of) making excuses.”

Greg Brkich, MLA for Arm River–Watrous and a Bladworth farmer, said the system is backed up about two months due to several factors including the large crop grown last year, bad weather conditions and a couple November derailments. He said the province is trying to find a solution to this through meeting with both CN (Canadian National Railway) and CP (Canadian Pacific Railway) and grain companies to come up with a quicker method of getting grain moved.

“The short-term (solution) is for the railroad companies to put more crews on and put more trains out there,” said Brkich. “Long term is we have to sit down with the (grain) companies and the railroads to develop a long-range plan to handle this kind of volume.

“You go back 10 years (and) we’ve grown bigger crops (almost every year). With the improved farming techniques that are out there we expect this to be the norm, so the problem has to be looked (at) into the future. This isn’t a one-time problem.”

Brkich said there are penalties in the Federal Fair Rail Freight Service Act that grain companies can pursue to make sure the railroads perform up to expectations, but the companies haven’t been using them. He said that is something the province is asking the companies to use to solve the backlog problem because it is only the grain companies that can bring action forward.

To read more please see the February 24 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

The Fitness Centre at the Davidson Communiplex is in the process of pumping up its offerings to members while also working out some strains along the way.

Trevor Ouellette, recreation director for Davidson, said two new LifeSpan TR5000 treadmills and one Spirit Fitness elliptical trainer were installed at the Fitness Centre last Tuesday. He said the town has also ordered matting to finish rubberizing the whole floor at the gym.

“This gives us decent quality equipment that our members can use,” said Ouellette, noting memberships had been in decline for a while, but are now staring to come back up and currently stand at 18. “It’s just (getting) things in order to get our membership up and provide a quality workout area.”

Ouellette said the new heavy-duty equipment cost the town $9,000 to install, while the new matting came with a price tag of $1,700. He said the snag with putting in the upgraded equipment is they are drawing too much power, so some additional electrical work has to be done.

“The (charge) draws too much because the plug-ins along the one wall are all off one breaker, so when you plug more than one in it blows the breaker,” he said, noting this should cost an additional $600 to $1,000 to fix. Ouellette said these expenses are going to be coming out of the 2014 budget.

Blair Frederickson, a Fitness Centre member since last November, said the Davidson gym is a great way for him to get a good workout and especially so because of its location near Davidson School where he works as a career guidance councillor. He said the free weights and benches are the main things he takes advantage of, but does appreciate the variety of equipment available.

“It’s nice to have a gym in town where instead of me having to put out the expense of having to buy all the equipment and put in my own basement and then have my wife going ‘well you smell really bad’ to come to the gym here and work out,” said Frederickson. “The new treadmills are nice. I’m an outside runner, but in winter (and) especially when it’s really cold that’s something I’ll take advantage of and use.”

Ouellette said the other project in the works for the gym is fixing their front door where cold and ice has lifted a pad up and the kick plates and jams are getting off-kilter. He said it takes a bit of “finessing” to open and close the doors now, but once that is fixed the gym upgrades should be completed.

“We may get a vast number of (new) memberships and have to increase our equipment,” he said, “but right at this time there is nothing in the works other than what has already been planned.”

Grade 5 students at Davidson School are increasing their energy awareness this winter by taking part in the Classroom Energy Diet Challenge competition.

The group of 24 kids began the Shell and Canadian Geographic presented online contest Feb. 5 under their team name “The Unshushables” when each member of the class chose an individual energy-themed and curriculum-linked challenge to complete. Each of these challenges help the students learn about diverse energy issues giving them the ability to then share that knowledge with their school and community to try and increase wider energy awareness.

“I did the one where you have to go a hour without power,” said Cheya O’Brien, 10. “You have to deal with no power and can’t run your computer or turn on lights. Researching it is cool and mine is fun.”

The “One Hour No Power” challenge gives a student an opportunity to identify and report on the difficulties and changes to their school life without power. It also explains to them why and how they can reduce their energy use and understand why reducing energy consumption is important.

Erika Warkentin, 10, said she chose to complete the “Water Works” challenge, which involves determining and discussing their daily water use, identifying strategies and initiatives for reducing water use while actually working to accomplish this.

“I have to do research into things like how much water is in a cotton t-shirt and stuff like that,” said Erika, adding this is important because reducing water waste in washes helps the environment.

Davidson School Grade 5 teacher Paul Stinson said these challenges and the Energy Diet competition helps him to try things he might not try otherwise to bring a student’s learning beyond the regular readings and tests. He said this contest is giving his students a chance to practise basic skills while also letting them do something that affects the community they live in.

“There are 25 challenges and 24 students, so they each have a chance to take on a leadership role by learning about their project and deciding which of the three versions of the project to do,” said Stinson, noting each version has a point total that can be put towards winning prizes. “There is classroom-based, school-based or community-based (versions) and the community-based is going to impact the most people, so it is the one with the most points. It would get them talking to the media for example or some of the projects would involve communicating with the town and the mayor.”

Stinson said the kids are excited about the chance of winning prizes, but that is not the point of taking part in the contest. He said completing these projects matches what they are covering in school this year, plus it’s something “fun” for the kids to do.