Martin Falls delivers all-season road study update – by Rick Garrick (Wawatay News – January 24, 2020)

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http://www.martenfallsaccessroad.ca/

Marten Falls delivered an update on its proposed all-season Community Access Road during a Public Information Centre session at the Valhalla Inn in Thunder Bay. “Marten Falls has been wanting an all-season road to the community for a long time and they’ve been working on it for a number of years now,” says Bob Baxter, Marten Falls citizen and member of the Community Access Road project team.

“We’re just in the environmental assessment stage and consulting stage right now to collect feedback from the public and the communities that will be affected.” Baxter says there has been mixed feedback from the community about the Community Access Road. “There’s problems like drug issues that they’re concerned about and the fluctuation of people coming up there to hunt,” Baxter says.

“On the positive side the cost of living would be brought down — the prices would somewhat come down so people would be able to purchase a lot more than they are purchasing now.” Lawrence Baxter, senior community advisor with Marten Falls, says the Community Access Road would be “very beneficial” for the community.

“I think it’s going to be really good — the independence to go in and out whenever you want,” Lawrence says. “The only concern people have is having people coming in from different walks of life.” Lawrence says one of the benefits from the Community Access Road would be better access to building materials for housing.

“And people can bring whole families out,” Lawrence says.Qasim Saddique, project manager for the Community Access Road, says the terms of reference draft for the project have been released to the public and to Indigenous communities who are interested in the project.“The terms of reference basically describes that we are moving forward with two alternatives which will be studied during the environmental assessment study,” Saddique says.

For the rest of this article (page 2): http://www.wawataynews.ca/newspapers/january-24-2020-volume-47-number-1