Saskatchewan will soon have a new town. It will include accommodations for more than 2,500 people, a gymnasium complete with squash courts, and a movie theatre. However, the town won’t be appearing on any official maps.
Discovery Lodge, which will be built near the George Gordon First Nation, will be a temporary work camp to house construction workers from mining giant BHP Billiton’s nearby Jansen Mine project.
“We’re going to have to bring people in, whether it’s from Saskatoon or elsewhere,” says BHP Vice President of External Affairs Chris Ryder. “It’s construction workforce, so you need a construction camp during the construction phase of the project.”
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The camp is being built because the size of the workforce would simply overwhelm area communities, which wouldn’t be able to accommodate such a large influx of people. It’s a problem that has already played itself out in Alberta.
“You look at camps, I toured a number of them in Alberta around Fort MacMurray,” says Finance Minister Ken Krawetz. “They’re built the same way, beautiful gymnasiums, beautiful cafeterias, and they’re built modular.”
The modular design is for easy construction, and deconstruction. The community is only temporary, with the first group of workers taking up residence in the fall of 2012. Construction is slated to be completed in fall 2013, with the community staying in place for probably a decade.
“Until we’re finished construction at Jansen,” added Ryder. “That should be until sometime in the early 2020’s, once we reach eight million tonnes of productin.
The community will be built by ATCO Structures and Logistics, in partnership with the George Gordon, Kawacatoose and Day Star First Nations.
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