County opens bridge refurbished with tax dollars
MONEY COMES FROM CONTROVERSIAL TAX ON INTENSIVE LIVESTOCK FEEDING
Lethbridge County residents are seeing results from their council’s controversial tax on intensive livestock feeding.
Reeve Lorne Hickey and councillors lined up Monday to formally open an $800,000 bridge supported by that tax revenue. Braving -18C weather, they cut a ribbon at the Keho canal crossing northwest of Picture Butte.
Funds from the County’s “Funding Our Future” initiative backed the project, the reeve said.
One of scores of County bridges and culverts built by the province many decades ago — and subsequently turned over to the County to maintain — the old crossing no longer met safety standards, Many of the crossings were built 50 to 80 years ago, Hickey said. Since then, the size and number of trucks serving agricultural producers have grown steadily.
Irrigation canals have been enlarged and improved as well, the reeve said, so the new bridge had to be built longer. County officials are collaborating with irrigation district personnel as new crossings are being designed, he noted.
The results, Hickey said, will include safer access for residents as well as agribusiness truckers.
Rick Bacon, the County’s director of municipal services, reported the project was completed on time and on budget. Construction actually wrapped up last fall.
The project cost was originally estimated at $1 million to $1.2 million, he said, but highways maintenance contractor Volker Stevin submitted the low bid for $800,000. Earlier, he said, the company was also the successful bidder to replace a bridge in the McNally district.
Next on the County’s crossing construction list, Bacon said, is a bridge on a haul road south of Nobleford.
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