Fort McMurray Minute: Issue 130

Fort McMurray Minute - Your weekly one-minute summary of Fort McMurray politics

📅 This Week In Fort McMurray: 📅

• The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo is handing residential recycling collection to Circular Materials on October 5th under Alberta's Extended Producer Responsibility regulation, which shifts the responsibility for managing and funding residential recycling from municipalities to the producers of packaging and paper materials. Ahead of the switch, the municipality's own recycling carts are being removed permanently, with light blue carts collected from tomorrow to Friday and dark blue carts from September 29th to October 2nd on each household's regular collection day. Residents who miss the pickup can take their old carts to the public drop-off area at the landfill free of charge until December 31st, 2026. Replacement Circular Materials carts, the same capacity as the ones they are replacing, begin arriving at the front of residences tomorrow, and all accepted materials can go into the single new cart. Collection frequency will differ by community, running weekly in Fort McMurray, Anzac, Draper, Gregoire Lake Estates, and Saprae Creek Estates, and every two weeks in Conklin, Fort McKay, and Janvier. Questions about the old carts still go to the municipality's Pulse line, but collection itself is handled by Collective Waste Solutions once the new service begins.
  
  
• Premier Danielle Smith says Alberta has begun planning and engineering work on a permanent road connecting the Fort McMurray area to La Loche, Saskatchewan, and suggested the project could be accelerated. Speaking during a visit to the region for the Oil Sands Expo, Smith said the long-discussed route, raised years ago in part as another evacuation option after the 2016 wildfire, could now serve a broader economic purpose. No cost estimate, route, or construction timeline was given. A permanent link would also connect the region more directly with NexGen Energy's Rook I uranium project, under construction about 150 kilometers north of La Loche, which received its final federal construction approval in March and broke ground in August. NexGen puts pre-production capital costs at about $2.2 billion, expects construction to take roughly four years, and says the mine would become the world's largest single source of uranium at up to 30 million pounds of uranium oxide a year.
  
  
• Fort McMurray's housing market is tightening, with the supply of single-family detached homes at a 10-year low, according to a realtor in the region. New listings were down 14.7% year-to-date at the end of August, while the average price of a detached home sat at about $475,000, still well below the roughly $770,000 he says homes reached during the previous boom. The realtor attributes the turnaround to returning confidence in the oilsands, with contractors hiring again and workers who left during the last decade moving their families back. The shift is showing up in the condominium market as well, where apartment-style units that once sold for about $450,000 and later fell as low as $190,000 have recovered to roughly $260,000 to $265,000, and a two-bedroom apartment rents for about $2,000 a month. 
  
  
• The federal government is removing new in situ oilsands facilities and gas-fired power plants from its impact assessment project list, handing primary responsibility for reviewing and approving them to the provinces. Ottawa says the change is meant to reduce duplication, streamline project reviews, and give investors more certainty. Interprovincial and international pipelines are also being taken out of the Impact Assessment Agency's designated-project process, with the Canada Energy Regulator leading those reviews instead, and some power lines and offshore renewable projects shift to the same regulator. Premier Danielle Smith welcomed the decision, writing that it fulfills a promise the federal government made to Alberta in the implementation agreement the two governments signed earlier. She said the change will reduce regulatory duplication and uncertainty and help Alberta's energy and electricity sectors attract investment, but argued that Bill C-69, the federal Impact Assessment Act, still needs to be repealed or amended further to respect provincial autonomy. Alberta is continuing its case on the Act before the province's Court of Appeal.
  
  
• Graig Walsh is stepping down as Chief Executive of the Regional Recreation Corporation of Wood Buffalo effective October 2nd. The corporation's board has appointed Kelly Dela Ronde, who has been with the organization since 2013, as Interim Chief Executive effective September 11th. Board Chair Chris Pirie thanked Walsh for leading the organization through the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 Fort McMurray flood, and credited him with strengthening its finances and its safety performance. No reason was given for the departure. Pirie said Dela Ronde's experience and knowledge of the organization leave her well-positioned to provide continuity and maintain the organization's momentum. The corporation says the transition will not affect day-to-day operations, programs, or services. 
  
  

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