EDMONTON - Epcor will send letters to as many as 5,000 Edmonton homeowners advising them they should take precautions with their tap water because it comes into their homes through lead pipes that could leach small amounts of the toxic metal.
Recommended precautions will include running a tap for a minute each morning to purge lines of lead that accumulated in the water overnight.
SYLVAN LAKE - The soccer wall in the north end of Four Seasons Park is coming down.
But it could pop back up in the south end of the park depending on feedback from nearby residents.
On Tuesday, Sylvan Lake Town Council approved the new location in the park at the south end of the outdoor rink, where the closest resident on Herder Drive is 127 metres away.
Currently the wall, erected last November, is 24 metres from its closest resident on Herder Drive.
EDMONTON - Strathcona County will join the new regional board armed with a survey showing 84 per cent of its citizens who were surveyed reject giving Edmonton a veto on the board, Mayor Cathy Olesen said Wednesday.
In her annual state of the county address, Olesen said she`s prepared to move forward with discussions regarding the new board, which is to guide regional planning in Edmonton and 24 surrounding municipalities.
EDMONTON - After two years of double-digit increases, Edmonton condo price growth will moderate over the next five years, says a report released Wednesday by Genworth Financial Canada.
That`s good news for first-time buyers and empty-nesters, said the company.
Prices for Edmonton condos are forecast to rise 6.4 per cent in 2008, after they went up 25.8 per cent in 2006 and 43.2 per cent last year, says Genworth`s Winter 2008 Metropolitan Condominium Outlook.
EDMONTON - With a decision on whether to start building a new bitumen mega-mine on its horizon, Imperial Oil Ltd. offered Wednesday to help the province improve public services in the Fort McMurray region.
Imperial chairman Tim Hearn said it is still "premature" for commitments to a proposed second oilsands community but did not rule out a company role in responding to growth requirements from housing to health care and recreation.
Fresh on the heels of announcing the location of a new $1-billion-plus power plant in Calgary, city-owned Enmax Corp. announced Wednesday it has purchased a southern Alberta wind farm for $163 million in debt and equity.
The acquisition from Creststreet Kettles Hill Windpower LP of Toronto will add 63 megawatts (MW) of power to Enmax`s wind energy portfolio, which includes a 50 per cent stake in the 75-MW McBride Lake Wind Farm near Fort Macleod, along with all of Enmax`s 81-MW Taber Wind Farm, opened in October at a cost of $140 million.
UTS Energy Corp. and partner Teck Cominco Ltd. are pursuing two new oilsands mines that together could cost $12 billion or more to build, even as environmental pressure on the oilsands industry mounts and financing options shrivel.
The aggressive plan adds two new giant northern Alberta construction projects to the queue and means UTS now has five mining projects on its plate, if later phases two and three of the Fort Hills oilsands project are included as separate projects.
There`s no so-called bubble in Calgary`s rapidly expanding condominium market, says a new report from a major mortgage insurer that concludes local prices will continue to rise, moderately, over the next half decade.
In a study conducted with the Conference Board of Canada, Genworth Financial Mortgage Insurance Co. Canada said Wednesday that average condo prices in Calgary should rise 4.1 per cent in 2008 and by an annual average of 3.1 per cent between now and 2012.
EDMONTON - The city has not acquired any new land for its proposed Boyle Renaissance project with property prices well above what the city is willing to pay.
"The expectations of the land owners at this point are so far beyond market that we haven`t been able to negotiate any reasonable acquisitions," said Walter Trocenko, the city`s strategic services manager. "Without the land, there really isn`t the ability to move forward with a significant portion of Boyle Renaissance."
EDMONTON - A ringing alarm bell on the Alberta Forest Products Association website drives home the point -- the provincial industry is in such deep trouble that its survival is at stake.
While much of the Alberta economy is prospering, forestry suffered one of its worst years on record in 2007 with the value of shipments falling $446.5 million from 2006, the industry group said Thursday.
EDMONTON - The weak U.S. dollar and Alberta`s economic boom have eroded Edmonton`s business cost advantage in the last two years, a new study reports.
Only Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary and Chilliwack, B.C. have higher costs of doing business than Edmonton, which is now on a par with the U.S., according to KPMG`s 2008 Competitive Alternatives study released Thursday.
Western RV Country is poised to return to Red Deer, with a full-service dealership planned for the city.
Todd Plotnikoff, who is Western RV Country`s project manager, confirmed that a nearly 20,000-square-foot facility on four to five acres is proposed. He said he couldn`t elaborate on a likely location, but the dealership would include eight service bays, wash bays, a sanitary dump and a hitch-installation shop.
The Telus Convention Centre has made the decision to aggressively address its waste. Making better use of its space is the change that will be most visible, but general manager Marcia Lyons says zero waste for conventions and meetings is also high on her list of priorities.
Many will remember enjoying some fine lunches and events in the Olde Scotch Room that sat on the south side of the corridor between the Glenbow Museum and the Calgary Marriott Hotel. Lineups to get in were the norm during Stampede week.
U.S. chemical and agricultural products maker DuPont Co. said on Thursday its Pioneer Hi-Bred business has opened a new canola production facility in Canada, to meet with increasing demand for its canola hybrids.
While the jury remains out on the province`s timeframe for twinning Highway 63 south towards Edmonton, another portion of the much maligned road will be getting that very treatment by the end of this year.
A spokesman from Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation said Wednesday provincial crews will resume twinning a 17 km stretch of the highway north of Fort McMurray, from Suncor Energy to Syncrude Canada, this summer.
In the last several years, Grande Prairie has seen all sides of the real estate cycle. During the height of the industrial boom, developers just couldn`t build fast enough. Speculation and house flipping was rampant and it seemed prices were rising on a weekly basis.
But last month housing starts in Grande Prairie dropped to some of their lowest levels in years. By the end of February (March figures are not yet available) single-family housing starts were down 67 per cent compared to the start of 2007 and multi-family starts were down 78 per cent.
LACOMBE — People disputing development plans in the region between Lacombe and Blackfalds will have more opportunities to put their own ideas on the table, says the reeve of Lacombe County.
Reeve Terry Engen and his council heard on Thursday from a group of landowners who dislike the direction in which the two towns and the county are taking the region.
A large windmill could generate almost enough power to run the Buffalo Lake pumping station, according to data just presented to the Buffalo Lake Management Team.
A year-long study into the possibility of running the station with wind power found that a 1.5 megawatt turbine on an 80 metre-high windmill would generate about 2.9 gigawatts of power a year. That is slightly less than what the team had hoped to find, Al Corbett, manager of water management operations for the Environment Albert`s central and northern region, said Friday.
Keyera receives approval to add ethane extraction near Rimbey
Keyera Facilities Income Fund has received regulatory approval to add ethane extraction equipment to its gas plant northeast of Rimbey.
Calgary-based Keyera (TSX:KEY.UN) announced last July that it planned to modify the facility to allow for the removal of about 5,000 barrels of ethane per day from the raw natural gas processed there.
A 32-km pipeline to tie the plant into the Alberta ethane gathering system was also proposed.
The first major project in The Quarters, an 18-block area the city wants to revitalize in the east end of downtown, will go to city council April 14.
Senior city planner Duncan Fraser calls the 62-unit Valleyview condo proposal "a sign of confidence in The Quarters."
The 16-storey Valleyview building would be built on a parking lot south of Jasper Avenue at 96th Street, and would sit directly in front of St. Barbara`s Russian Orthodox Cathedral.
