The Kneehill water line has been an expensive fiasco. Everybody knows it. Even our MLA.
It’s too bad Richard Marz and his Progressive Conservative government aren’t willing to do anything about it.
I live in Irricana, one of the seven municipalities on the Kneehill water line. I also grew up in Carbon, another village on the line.
Carbon is one of those special little communities that thousands call home, despite living in places like Airdrie and Calgary. When you drive down the hill into the valley, you can’t help but smile.
Long, long ago Carbon was a booming coal mining town, with upwards of 2,000 residents and dozens of businesses. Since its heyday 90 years ago, the Village in the Valley has slowly but surely declined. With the exception of a few booms along the way, both people and businesses have steadily departed. It didn’t happen suddenly, and you can’t put a finger on when the tide turned.
The community would have disappeared long ago, except for a few scrappy optimists along the way.
Various mayors and councils have invested heavily in trying to reverse the trend. There is a small industrial park just east of town. There has never been a business in it, just a vacant hay field with a sign. Every 20 years or so council puts money into servicing it, hoping against hope that this time things will be different.
For nearly 20 years, the Golden Hills School Division has been kicking around the idea of shutting down the local school. The number crunchers say student numbers don’t warrant having a school, yet it seems there are too many students to pay for transporting them an hour every day to another town. Every year, parents and what remains of the business community fight to keep the school open, and up until now they’ve been successful.
Truth be told, the Lions Club and its various events do more for the village than anything else. Lions’ dances, comedy nights and sports days keep the sons and daughters of the village coming home. The economic spin off is negligible, but these events keep hope and a sense of community alive.
However, like the farmers around town, the Lions Club members are getting older. Every year, fewer and fewer kids graduate from the high school. When most of them leave for college, they don’t come back except to visit. There just aren’t enough jobs.
This year the town’s largest employer was sold. The business will remain in the village for two years. After that, nobody knows.
Actually, we all know. We just don’t want to say it out loud.
Which brings me back to the Kneehill water line. The price of water is too damn high. It undercuts everything we do, as a region, to encourage economic development.
Do we need MLA Richard Marz to tell us that the Kneehill water line was a bad deal? No. We learn that again and again, every time we open our water bills. Do I blame Marz for the price of my water? Once again, no.
But we definitely don’t need our MLA going around blaming us for the problem. We need somebody to fight for us.
An important debate in the next provincial election will be the role of the provincial government in society. Like Marz, I describe myself as a fiscal conservative. I want smaller government. But there are certain things that only government can do – and one of those things is provide an environment in which business can flourish. Marz and his PC government have lost sight of this.
When the government plans to massively overbuild an electrical distribution system, sticking Albertans with higher electric bills, that’s bad for business.
When the government plays yo-yo with energy royalty rates, throwing the province’s largest industry into disarray, that’s bad for business.
And when the government goes around spending millions for an outgoing premier’s legacy, while ignoring less expensive and more important responsibilities, that’s bad for business.
What’s bad for business is bad for dying towns. Towns like Carbon.
Carbon is just one of the seven municipalities on the line. Others are Rocky View County, Kneehill County, Irricana, Beiseker, Acme and Linden.
Marz needs to understand that blaming various municipal councils and punishing an entire region accordingly is not leadership. Leading means going to bat for your constituents, fighting for them, for a better future.
Right now, the person fighting for his constituents is Beiseker Mayor Bruce Rowe. It certainly isn’t Marz or his PC government.
