County of Paintearth approves purchase of thermal camera

ECA Review/Submitted

Paintearth county council has approved the request to buy a thermal camera as a fire prevention tool.

During the regular council meeting on June 6, the council accepted the motion to buy the camera.

According to the information package, the thermal camera is supposed to help prevent fires. It would be used to educate the public on fire safety practices and identify additional prevention support.

Using the thermal camera will allow the user to review fire pits, bales, old fire locations and more.

“It’s worth having if you’re walking through ashes,” said Reeve, Stan Schulmeister.

While the thermal camera will be able to help prevent fires and the camera can pick up hot spots before they ignite, everyone will still be responsible for any fires started on their property.

“The administrative process would be to notify them that we can do this for them,” said Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) Michael Simpson,”If they don’t want us to go on and camera their land we won’t but it’s on them if something happens.”

Fibre optic line placement

The County of Paintearth has approved the placement of fibre optic lines along a stretch of half a mile on Township Road 400 and Range Road 145 north of Township Road 400.

In the past, some concerns with having the lines placed in the ditches meant that it could cause issues for other work being done within the county.

“Some of the concerns were coming from the surrounding abundance of electrical lines, approaches and things like that,” said CAO Simpson.

Eighty per cent of the lines are now on private property out of the ditches, so they are no longer an issue for the county.

“We’ve got it down to 80 per cent eliminated if it’s subject to agreement, still put in conditions that will mitigate the risks.”

In the case of the fibre optic lines placement, they had unsuccessful conversations with landowners to place the lines on their property.

According to the meeting package with ATCO’s requested route, “there are no conflicts with the proposed area with Cap Power’s H2 collector lines using any County right-of-way.”

The council approved ATCO’s route after a brief discussion whether there would be any issues for the county. The county does not foresee doing a lot of work to the intersection of 44 and 400 as it is already well established.

Article published by East Central Alberta Review