Ever since zebra mussels were found in Clear Lake a few years ago, Aquatic Invasive Species, or AIS, have been on the mind of a lot of Parkland residents. For those in Rossburn Municipality, those concerns will go down a bit, thanks to a grant from the provincial government.
Rossburn Municipality will receive $53,000 to help combat AIS through physcal prevention and education. Emily Sawchuk, Rossburn Municipality's Chief Adminstrative Officer, said it's been in the works for a while now, and she's glad to see they're moving forward.
"We worked pretty closely with the province when we were doing our grant application, we had quite a bit of feedback going back and forth through the application process with the Manitoba government, and they were very supportive in us submitting an application...our municipal council wanted to be proactive in the prevention of AIS, and I think that's a huge thing for Rossburn Municipality as we have so many lakes," said Sawchuk.
It's true that Rossburn Municipality has a lot of lakes, but their proximity to Clear Lake has been a bit of a concern with their zebra mussel problem. Pleasure craft are a fairly common passtime for Rossburn Municipality residents, so Rossburn Municipality is using part of their grant to help ease those concerns, right in the heart of Rossburn.
"Through our grant and through an asset agreement with the Province of Manitoba, they've given us a Hotsy Pressure Washer, and they've trained up our staff to do decontamination. So we'll actually have an AIS decontamination station set up right in the Town of Rossburn," said Sawchuk.
The decontamination station is part of the grant's physical prevention stream, which leaves a lot left to be used under the education and outreach stream. Sawchuk said the Municipality already has some signs at some lakes, but they'll soon be turning education up to 11.
"We'll have lots of signage throughout the municipality at different lakes, we do have some kind of basic signage out right now, but we will be amping that up a bit through the education and outreach portion. The province has provided us with materials for distribution, so pamphlets and posters, and all those kind of things...we're really fortunate we have some folks that live at out lakes that are what we're calling our community ambassadors, so they're going to be helping us with just educating your friends at the bonfire on the weekend, or this kind of thing to kind of get that messaging out. It's really important that we have community buy in, and local fishermen and recreation users getting in that same habit," said Sawchuk.
Sawchuk said she's glad to see the Municipality's work with the Provincial government pay off so they can help prevent AIS within Rossburn Municipality.
"We are really thankful to be a recipient of this grant, we're really excited to work with the Province of Manitoba on this, and we're really looking forward to preventing AIS in our municipality," said Sawchuk
Zebra mussels were first confirmed in Clear Lake in January of 2023.
