The Village of Telkwa unveiled its biomass heating system at a ribbon cutting ceremony on Saturday afternoon, followed shortly after by their annual Volunteer Appreciation BBQ at the community hall.
Mayor Carman Graf welcomed those in attendance, a group that included former Telkwa mayors and Smithers’ Mayor Taylor Bachrach.
“Thank you all for coming out to help us celebrate this day,” Graf said.
“This building was originally a farm machine supply store, then it was a dairy and now it’s going to be a municipal building for the next 50 or 100 years.
“We are really pleased we got this far with it.”
Graf also mentioned the staff that helped make the project a reality.
“I would like to thank all the people that helped out, Kim [Martinson] and her staff and my council and everyone who worked hard on this project.”
After the speeches and ribbon cutting, those in attendance were given a tour of the new biomass heating system by designer Thomas Wunderland, who, by a twist of fate, recently moved to the Bulkley Valley from the Northwest Territories, where he was installing biomass energy systems.
In addition to supplying cheaper energy, the project also provides clean energy, he said.
“Emissions always come up, and from my point of view, it’s a non-issue,” Wunderland told the crowd.
“This boiler burns the equivalent of 30 woodstoves, but has the emissions of less than one. It’s about 50 to 100 times cleaner.”
“One burning slash pile of wood produces more emissions than this boiler does in a single year.”
The heating system goes through about one tonne of chips on a cold winter day, supplying about one million BTUs.
Recently, the system was hooked up on a grid to supply heat to the village office, Telkwa Elementary School, the pub and four residences.
The energy for the heat is supplied by excess wood waste from pine beetle forest devastation. All told, in energy savings and energy sales, the heating system will save approximately $25,000 per year.
In addition to the biomass heating system, the Hankin Corner Building now boasts three commercial spaces that will be ready to open in the coming months.
The Hankin Corner Building renovations were paid for by the federal $644,000 Gas Tax Innovation fund, but the original grant had specific conditions that prevented redistribution of space into retail and outdoor renovation. Village council decided that, rather than re-do the outside of the building later on at a higher cost, they would pay for it during the biomass renovations and use different grant money for the creation of retail space.
The repurposing of the outside of the building into commercial spaces was paid for by a $170,000 Northern Development Trust Initiative grant, which the village officially received last week.
“This is meant as a catalyst to demonstrate to the business community that there is a demand for business and commercial space in Telkwa,” village councillor Rimas Zitkauskas said.
The spaces are spoken for, but the leases have yet to be signed.
The Village is expecting an official announcement on rental agreements within the next two weeks.
Though no individual details of the rental lease agreements will be made public, the amount of money taken in by the retail spaces will appear as a revenue item in the village budget.
After the ribbon cutting and tour, many of the spectators travelled up to the community hall for the second annual Volunteer Appreciation BBQ.
Burgers and drinks were served to dozens in attendance and the Ewk Hiya Hozdli Wtisit Wini dance group performed for the crowd.
“Volunteers are extremely important to our community,” Zitkauskas said.
“The contributions that they make to the social life of a community, well you can’t count that in dollars.
“We all benefit form the fact that there is this great group of people like the volunteer firefighters that are willing to volunteer their time to keep everyone else safe.
And there are others. The reading room, museum, senior society, and social events that are put on by volunteers all adds to the life of the village.”
Of note: The Village of Telkwa held its annual budget and five-year plan meetings on Monday. For a full report, check next week’s edition of The Interior News.
