NORGLENWOLD — Fire bans are lifted, so now is the time to start burning outhouses, says the mayor of Sylvan Lake.
Braced against a frosty wind on Tuesday morning, Susan Samson stood with other dignitaries at a roadside in Norglenwold to celebrate hooking the summer village’s new sewer line into the Town of Sylvan Lake’s wastewater system.
The $2.4-million line was completed in August, said Norglenwold Mayor Carol McMillan, whose home was the first to be hooked in.
Costs of the Norglenwold project, designed and built by Red Deer-based Stantec Engineering, were shared between the summer village, provincial and federal governments at $800,000 each.
Forty homes have been tied into the line with 139 still to go, said McMillan.
Others, like Deputy Mayor Toby Lampard, will have to abandon their outhouses and install indoor toilets.
Lampard said he isn’t ready to burn his outhouse down, but will convert it to a garden shed as soon as he can get an indoor privy installed.
Keeping human and household waste from seeping into the lake was the main thrust behind the project. It will eventually become part of a regional sewer system.
The summer village of Jarvis Bay tied into Sylvan Lake’s sewer system in 1999, piggy-backing on a request by the province to have the town provide sewer services to the nearby campground, said Lampard.
The next step is for the three remaining summer villages at Sylvan Lake to finalize their plans for building collection systems, he said.
“It’s important for all of us. We call it Slurpie — the Sylvan Lake Waste Water Regional Partnership. I hope it doesn’t stop at the summer villages.”
Lampard said hamlets and acreage subdivisions were not included in the Water For Life strategy under which the province provided its share of the funding.
“We’ve got the likes of Blissful Beach, Kuusamo Crest, we’ve got three more at the north end of the lake coming on, and they’ll all have effluent. They’ll all need to be treated.”
Birchcliff Mayor Joyce Megson said that, for her summer village, it will be a matter of getting the funds together.
Lampard said the Norglenwold project was done with minimal impact on the roads and landscape within the summer village.
“We were able to do this project over the last year and change and we didn’t tear the village up. Most of our roads got away without too much damage. It was really quite a success on that side.”
bkossowan@www.reddeeradvocate.com