Jayda Noyes, Daily Herald
The third project to be announced as part of the partnership between the City of Prince Albert and Husky Energy is a billboard.
The funding is to compensate for the 2016 oil spill in the North Saskatchewan River, which forced a temporary closure on the city’s water facilities. While Husky doesn’t owe any money for costs directly relating to the spill, Dionne called the compensation part of the “community cost.”
The sign will stand between the intersection of 2nd Avenue West and 15th Street East and the E.A. Rawlinson Centre.
Dionne said they haven’t chosen an exact location.
“It will be 10 by 20, electronic, two-sided, so we get the traffic off the bridge and the traffic out of this corner,” he said while making the announcement at the intersection—one of the busiest in P.A.
Dionne added traffic coming in from the bridge reaches 22,500 cars every day.
The billboard will be entirely for the city’s use and won’t be leased for other advertising, but there’s one city-owned and operated facility that has priority.
“The main purpose of it is to advertise events that are going on at the Rawlinson Centre. They’ve been looking for something for years,” said Dionne.
Other things it will advertise are sports and water outages.
“We’ve got to do better advertising and communicating and this billboard will do it,” he said.
Kiley Bear, the city’s communications manager, will operate it from the comfort of her desk at City Hall.
The billboard has a different meaning than the two other announcements of completing the Rotary Trail and replacing the Ella Muzzy Paddling Pool in Kinsmen Park with a new spray pad.
“(Husky Energy) wanted something that was more general,” said Dionne.
While the paddling pool had to close during the spill, the Rotary Trail provided a path for two freshwater resources to connect to the water treatment plant.
All three projects are scheduled for 2019.
During the announcement of completing The Rotary Trail, Dionne said the total amount of funding is about $1 million.
Specifics will be released later this week.
