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On the scene with the Waterton Green Team
Friday September 05, 2008
What a season! The Green Team worked on several projects this year, including:
* Tree transplanting
* Organizing Canada Day festivities
* Garage sale / give and take
* Project Porchlight
* New signage for the green trailer
* Increasing propane canister recycling
* A new website page on www.mywaterton.com
* New Green Team t-shirts for children
* Producing the 2008 EnviroDirectory
* And of course, writing columns for The Boundary (which has allowed us to communicate with many more residents and visitors).
These projects were on top of managing the busy recycling program in Waterton, which includes recyclables in the Green Trailers, refundable beverage containers in the Blue Bins, and maintaining the ReUse Centre. A part-time Green Team Coordinator was hired to help oversee the recycling, meet with businesses and work on projects. Over the past few years, recycling effort has doubled each year - a wonderful success story and much more work for the Green Team. In 2007, over 107,000 refundable beverage containers were recycled (over eight metric tonnes), over 5,000 tonnes of recyclables from the Green Trailers were taken in, and 230 propane canisters were recycled.
This year, the Green Team and Parks Canada purchased seven new blue bins to help meet increasing demand. At the end of July, 42,000 refundable beverage containers were recycled, with a huge backlog yet to be processed. For June alone, 1,300 metric tonnes of recyclables was collected in the Green Trailer and, to date, over 500 propane canisters have been collected for recycling.
With the Improvement District and Parks Canada’s study on waste management and new ideas being looked at for Waterton Avenue (“main street”), the Green Team is looking forward to some great things happening in Waterton in the coming years. The Green Team will also be posting a contract to help manage the blue bin program - if you are interested, please contact the Green Team for more information.
It looks like the next year will also be a busy one for the Green Team, with new projects and initiatives on the horizon. Thanks to all of our volunteers and supporters - without you, we wouldn’t have had all of these great successes. And thanks to The Boundary team for allowing us this space to pass on information about our events and Green Tips - we look forward to coming back next year.
Contact Us
Interested in greening up Waterton? We could always use a helping hand for a variety of events and projects. If you’d like to volunteer some time to the Green Team or have ideas or comments, please email: waterton.green.team@gmail.com or phone 859-5105.
Founded in 1993, the Waterton Community Green Team (WCGT) is a non-profit, volunteer-based organization whose mandate is to foster environmental stewardship in the local community through outreach, education and local programs and partnerships.
Waterton Show & Shine draws exotic wheels from far and wide
by Benjamin Freeland
Friday September 05, 2008
Sunday, Aug. 24 marked the fourth annual Waterton Show and Shine event.
Hosted by Pat’s Gas and Cycle Rental and situated at the Waterton Recreational Complex ball diamond, the event drew 136 vehicles and their owners, coming from as far away as Fort St. John.
While this year’s high gas prices have meant a drop in the number of visitors to the park from the United States and elsewhere, event organizer Susan Ober asserts that this had no impact on this year’s Show and Shine. “Our numbers were as high as last year,” says Ober. “There has been no decline.”
Classic car enthusiasts were treated to a wide array of exotic vehicles, ranging from the ancient to the ultramodern. Paul Madge of Milk River, AB brought the event’s oldest vehicle, a 1912 International Harvester Autowagon - essentially a pickup truck from yesteryear. Meanwhile, the world’s first modern mass-production car, the Ford Model T, was also represented at the event, courtesy of Sam Squire from Nanton and Margaret Gosling from Fort Macleod.
There were also some real rarities at the event, including an elegant and extremely rare 1934 Hudson Terraplane (only 25 of which are confirmed to exist) owned by Watertonites Jim and Caroline Weisgerber and a 1959 Mercury Monterey in its original paint job owned by Bryce Andreasen, also a Waterton resident. There were also some beguiling soup-up jobs, including a modified 1958 Western Flyer intercity bus, converted into a recreational vehicle by Scott Shrow of Red Deer.
The event also featured a celebrity entrant - a four-wheeled movie star in the form of a modified 2007 GMC Topkick C6500 owned by Bryce Karl of Calgary and driven by business partner Bronc Pilling of Cardston.
This monster of a vehicle was catapulted to fame when it was cast as the vehicle form of the methodical, but indestructible Autobot warrior Ironhide in last year’s Transformers live action film. One of several GM vehicles used in the film (together with the cars cast in the leading roles of Bumblebee, Jazz and Ratchet), the Topkick C6500 is now available as a production car for heavy-duty pickup truck enthusiasts with a taste for sci-fi.
Thanks to sunny skies and warm temperatures a sizeable weekend crowd was on hand at the Waterton Show and Shine. Organizer Ober was very happy with how the event turned out. “It was a really nice, low-key day,” she says. “Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves.”
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