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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Former mill town looks to the future

By: Bill Redekop

Posted: 09/19/2011 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

POWERVIEW-PINE FALLS -- As Andrew Kaus and I stood on the Winnipeg River shore on former Tembec land slated for development, we suddenly heard the tremendous crack of a rifle just across the river from us.

I went into a slight crouch. At first, I wondered if we were being shot at. My next thought was, because we were in a semi-residential area, that it could be a case of domestic violence.

"Bears," muttered Kaus.

No, not bears firing rifles. People firing rifles at bears. Bears are everywhere here. One person across the river in the RM of Alexander had four bears up his oak trees at one time. Manitoba Conservation live-trapped 12 bears on his rural residential property in five days.

Kaus, the executive director of Edgewater Development Corp., which is steering this area's redevelopment, had to chase a bear out of his suburban yard by making banging noises. He has young children. With the berry crop a failure, squirrels are having to compete with the bruins for acorns this year. The shot we heard came from across a narrow stretch of river in the RM of Alexander.

People here see wilderness as key to its recovery from the closure of the Tembec paper mill two years ago.

The town hopes hunting and fishing will be a major draw. "A big priority is tourism and recreational development," said Kaus. There's also lake recreation. Paul Gauthier, co-owner of the local Shell station and a former mill worker, said it takes him 40 minutes to boat to Victoria Beach from Powerview-Pinefalls. It takes a little longer to go to Grand Beach. "There's so much that can happen here," he said.

Tembec recently sold its mill and land, including river front, to NRI Global out of Brampton, Ont., a subsidiary of NRI Global in Buffalo, N.Y. NRI specializes in decommissioning heavy industrial sites. The old mill site has about 250 acres in Pine Falls.

Plans are to allow at least 75 acres for residential and cottage development. Another 25 acres are planned for commercial development, and 85 acres for industrial. The rest is labelled "unknown." NRI hopes to have the mill demolished and the site as clean as a parking lot in 24 months.

"There could be a marina there, residential housing, there could be some parkland, there could be a trail along the river, and there's a parcel of land outside of Highway 11 and that would make sense for an industrial park," said Peter Boyd, NRI director of investments, in a telephone interview.

There is another 1,200 acres on the north side of the Winnipeg River the paper mill used as refuse grounds. About 100 acres is the refuse site and the rest is a buffer zone. The site is being remediated, too, but any development will be in the future.

NRI will try to salvage what it can from the mill. It would like to find buyers for equipment like the Thermal Mechanical Pulping System. The system cost $125 million and is less than 10 years old. Under the pulping system, an operation that previously required 125 staff could be done by just two people.

A return of large-scale industrial forestry is not in the cards, said Brian Kotack of the Manitoba Model Forest, which is set up in P-P. "No one will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on equipment again," he said.

There's potential for small-scale forestry initiatives, however. A company wants to manufacture wood pellets as a source of biomass energy.

A small-scale sawmill to make lumber for housing in the area would make a lot of sense, Kotack said.

The province is putting out calls soon for a Forestry Management Licence in the forest area from north of Winnipeg River to past Bissett.

That's when companies can pitch their proposals for use of the forest.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 19, 2011 A7

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