By Kevin J. Sabo
For the Advance
The Town of Castor council is moving forward with a request from the Castor & District Museum society to run a natural gas pipeline into the large storage shed in the museum compound near the elevator.
Representatives from the museum made the request during the Sept. 28th council meeting, at which council said they would consider the request once they had a better idea of costs involved.
Subsequent to that meeting the Castor & District Museum Society submitted two options for the install and the subsequent costs involved.
The first option, which is the one council approved, will see a gas line coming off the existing meter on the corner of the old schoolhouse, run above ground to the southeast corner of the building, then run underground via a trench into the storage shed where it will come above ground again and piped to the requested location.
Total cost for the project is estimated at just under $2,000.
Once installed, the Castor & District Museum will arrange to have a natural gas heater installed to allow the volunteers that run the organization to work in the storage shed over the winter. The heater won’t be used to heat the building all the time, just when volunteers are in there working.
The request for the work was made by the Castor & District Museum Society due to the anticipated increase of volunteers available during the upcoming winter due to travel restrictions still in place due to the ongoing pandemic.
Some discussion was held by council about requesting that the museum society pick up more of the costs, however due to winter rapidly approaching, council was urged by Mayor Richard Elhard to make a decision.
“Time is of the essence to get this done,” said Mayor Elhard.
In a motion put forward by Coun. Brenda Wismer, council voted in favour of moving forward with the project.