Grande Prairie-AB

6 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 4 COUNT Y OF GRANDE PRAI RI E final financial decision by the end of this year and be moving ahead with those. These are multi-billion dollar projects,” he maintains. After the recent completion of a high-level biomass study, the county will be taking part in a more intensive study which Marshall says will take a deeper look at the data. “Instead of a 40,000-foot view, we want to get right into the weeds and look at how much biomass we have with the sawmills, and the pulp mills that we have within the region,” he describes. “You look at all the biomass that’s available, and we’re only using about 50% of it.” Mentioning that the initial study predicted the region will receive an A rating or better at the end of the formal assessment. “It’s speculation until we have the actual numbers,” he admits, “but we’d be the very first ‘A’ rated woody biomass BDO Zone designation in Alberta.” This information will also help with marketing the county, which Marshall suggests would be an ideal location for a Cogen facility, or a pelletization plant. A new regional hospital in the city of Grande Prairie will service northern and northwest Alberta, and into the Yukon Territories. Attracting medical personnel is of top priority, and Marshall notes that there are unlimited opportunities within the hospital. He remarks, “It’s a beautiful facility, but we’re not able to utilize the full capacity of that hospital just because we don’t have the staff. A lot of the things I’ve heard from health practitioners that have come here are that it’s just amazing, it’s state of the art, it’s world-class.” The workforce is an ongoing challenge in the county, where employment opportunities are plentiful. Partnering with the city of Greenview and the Grande Prairie & District Chamber of Commerce, the focus is on business attraction and retention, while also enticing employees to the region. “We’re working on a study and getting a task group together to start formulating more ideas to bring in more people,”