Since 2014, communities located along the route of Manitoba Hydro’s Bipole III transmission line have been receiving compensation through the Bipole III Community Development Initiative. Niverville, the RM of Ritchot, and the RM of Hanover are all affected by the transmission line’s route and thus receive funding.
“Funding started to flow in February 2014,” says Eric King, Finance Administration Manager for the Town of Niverville. “It is based on population, proximity to Bipole III, and length of the line.”
King says that the funding is scheduled to continue for ten installments, four of which municipalities have already received. Because the amount of funds is tied to the municipalities’ population, the compensation is subject to change.
“The amount has changed,” says King. “[It] started at $149,000 [for Niverville] and is up to $157,195 this year, for instance.”
This past February, Ritchot received $137,000 and used the money to support a host of not-for-profit organizations and community-based projects. Niverville, on the other hand, has allocated the funds for economic development and the development of community infrastructure.
“To date, the funds have been earmarked for the Niverville Business Park, to assist in the purchasing of land and the future development of the park infrastructures,” King says.
Recently, Niverville’s town council issued an RFP (request for proposal) to encourage private enterprise to assume responsibility for the business park’s development. Should that happen, King notes that the accumulated Hydro funds would be reallocated to another community infrastructure project. Since 2014, these funds have been included in Niverville’s budget under Environmental Development Services.
To date, the RM of Hanover has received four payments totalling $658,240.
“This money is placed into a reserve and we have developed a policy for how this money is to be spent,” says Lisa Baldwin, Hanover’s Manager of Recreation and Community Services. “The money has been earmarked for recreation development and allocated equally across our municipality to the different communities and organizations.”
Baldwin notes that many communities within Hanover are still in the planning stages of their capital projects, but $195,600 has been spent so far, including for a splash pad in Blumenort, a picnic shelter for the Randolph Sports Club, playground fencing for Pansy Park, a new baseball diamond at Friedensfeld Community Centre, and a three-season summer pavilion at the Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach.
Manitoba Hydro’s Bipole III line has been under construction for several years, with most of the work so far being completed in the north. The high-voltage transmission line, according to Hydro’s website, “will deliver renewable energy to southern Manitoba and the United States, helping to reduce reliance on fossil fuels… [and] strengthen reliability and [the] security of Manitoba’s electricity supply by reducing dependency on existing high-voltage direct current transmission lines.”
The project is scheduled to be complete in 2018.
“We have had a number of challenges on this project,” says Glenn Penner, Division Manager for Transmission Construction and Line Maintenance, in a January update provided by Manitoba Hydro. “Weather, specifically, has been an issue for us. We’ve had two winter seasons that have been unseasonably warm. That’s caused us problems with access with winter roads, lack of snow, having it melt, and getting us out of the north too soon. This winter has been much colder.”
In the closing months of 2016, the project made significant progress, with more than 400 transmission towers being erected through the use of helicopters.
