http://www2.canada.com/saskatoonsta....html?id=0027ab63-b113-4669-a8ca-08b504d70b2a
Potash payday for Rocanville
Community prepares for pros, cons of mini-boom
Cassandra Kyle, The StarPhoenix
Published: Wednesday, November 04, 2009
With a population nearing 1,000 people, the town of Rocanville is preparing for an influx of new faces as the nearby Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan mine pushes forward with a $2.8-billion capacity expansion project. A year from now, 1,200 contract workers are expected to live and work at the potash mine, more than doubling the immediate population of the area.
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As the mid-afternoon sun shines in through the half-dressed windows of Rocanville's bakery, Cherie Dukart takes a moment to eat a quick lunch of deli meat on a slice of homemade bread.
Since 7 a.m., the owner of the Oven Door Bakery & Cafe has been busy baking buns, breads and sweet treats for the community of nearly 1,000 people. During the lunch hour, she and her staff barely had a moment to gather their thoughts while they made and served sandwiches to hungry workers, sliced large pieces of hot pizza for high school students and poured bowls of homemade minestrone and cream of potato soup to local women who had gathered to talk about the news of the day.
It's a pace Dukart, who bought the shop five months ago, expects will quicken as the weeks roll on. The population in the cozy, southeast Saskatchewan town continues to rise as more people move to the region looking to benefit from a $2.8-billion capacity expansion project at Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc.'s Rocanville potash mine, located a short drive from the community.
"Business has increased and that's because there's a lot of contractors and that sort of thing out there," said Dukart, who resides 30 minutes away in the town of Fleming. "Apparently (there's) a lot of unfamiliar faces to a lot of people, which is good. They're all shopping; they're eating; they're lodging. They're all doing things that generate the economy."
The global demand for the pink plant nutrient, which is a key ingredient in fertilizer, is changing the town, located about 230 kilometres east of Regina. Surrounded by golden fields but a few kilometres from the deep and winding Qu'Appelle Valley, Rocanville is boasting neon red No Vacancy signs on its motels and beige wood frames for new buildings and homes in the area.
In addition to more bakery business, Dukart hopes the influx of people the region is preparing for -- 1,200 contractors are expected to be working at the mine site a year from now -- brings new retail shops, specifically clothing stores, to the area.
"It's just a win-win situation, I think, for the area, and not just for Rocanville. There's spinoffs into Moosomin and maybe north into Esterhazy," she said.
MANY NEW FACES IN TOWN
Indeed, Mayor Daryl Fingas has seen first-hand the changes an increasing demand for potash has brought to the area. A resident of Rocanville for the past 28 years, and mayor for the past nine, Fingas once knew everyone in the community by name. With so many new faces in town, that reality no longer exists.
"It's a nice small community where you still almost know everybody," Fingas said on a chilly October evening.
The general consensus around town is that the impact of the multibillion-dollar expansion at PotashCorp's Rocanville operation on the community is, and will continue to be, a good thing, said the mayor.
Fingas, who works in the potash industry at Mosaic Co.'s Esterhazy mine, said PotashCorp is footing the bill for a new lagoon -- a project that would have cost the town about $2.5 million -- in exchange for providing water to the site. Plans for a new residential subdivision with close to 20 lots are well underway and a new medical centre has attracted a regional doctor for at least three days a week.
"I never thought it would ever be like this," he said. "Main Street is always full, you drive down Main Street and there's no place to park. It was a concern years ago that Main Street was empty, but not no more."
On the other side of the coin, residents are raising concerns about the mine expansion and its effect on the town. Their worries, which Fingas shares, aren't unlike the problems cities face as they deal with rapid growth: Lack of affordable housing, insufficient infrastructure and increased crime rates.
"More people lock their homes now. In this community you never locked your home, you never took your keys out of your vehicle," he said, adding figures from the RCMP show crime rates haven't yet risen.
Still, the Moosomin-based detachment has increased patrols in the Rocanville area, Fingas explained, and awareness programs have been held at the school in an effort to prevent youngsters -- especially girls -- from being lured into any threatening situations.
With PotashCorp planning to hire 270 more workers for the mine when the expansion project ends in 2013, and the average house price in Rocanville jumping from $75,000 to $175,000 since news of the project hit the community two years ago, Fingas said the town is working to attract condominium and apartment developers to the area.
NOTHING WITHOUT POTASH
Out at the mine, Steve Fortney, general manager of PotashCorp's Rocanville operation, said the company will do all it can to prevent trouble in the surrounding areas. The majority of the contract workers are being housed in temporary accommodations located on PotashCorp's Rocanville site, he explained, and a drug-testing policy is in place for contract workers operating on company property. Security guards are also posted to the temporary housing zone.
"There will be a lot of transient people coming into the area. We intentionally picked the camp location to keep it away from the town and we talked to the RCMP and they've added staff to provide better security in the area," Fortney said.
"The camp wasn't built to keep the construction workers from living in the communities, but when we did have to build a camp and you have 900 people, we picked a spot two miles down the road."
The Shaunavon-raised mine manager, who has worked at the Rocanville operation for the past 25 years, says the expansion project at the sprawling site comes with responsibility to both the company and the community.
"We need the town, we need the communities, we rely on them for providing educated, well-trained employees to come in. They provide a lot of services; our employees enjoy a good, comfortable lifestyle in the communities that they live in. A lot of people don't want the rat-race of the city," he said.
Rural Municipality of Rocanville Reeve Murray Reid said the expansion gives the area the opportunity to show it is the most progressive RM in the province. In addition to potash, there's also oil, agriculture, manufacturing and trucking in the area but, in Reid's words, PotashCorp is the biggest employer and biggest ratepayer in the
600-PERSON STRONG RM.
"Well, we'd be nothing (without potash)," said Reid, who raises livestock in the area. "Look at all the RMs around Saskatchewan, they're boarded up and your kids have to go 50 miles on the school bus every day. If there was no potash mine our kids would be going to school in Moosomin or Langenburg or Esterhazy, or you'd have to go to Moosomin for a quart of milk."
A house on every section of land and an influx of young families to the area would make Reid, a lifelong resident of the RM, a very happy reeve. But that's not to say the present situation doesn't put a smile on his face already.
"Any RM would kill for this . . . there are municipalities that can't even get a council, there aren't enough people left," he said.
As the mid-afternoon lull creates time for Dukart to prepare for the oncoming dinner rush, she says she's taking the busy days as they come. If she needs more staff, she'll hire. If she needs to extend her hours, she will.
"We just kind of watch and adjust as needed," she said.
So will the rest of the town.
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BY THE NUMBERS
1,000: Rocanville's estimated population
1,200: Number of contract workers expected at PotashCorp's Rocanville mine a year from now
460: Number of contractors already on-site
900: Temporary worker housing spaces available in 2010
450: Temporary worker housing spaces in use today
80: Contract workers currently housed in a second, smaller camp
400: Staff members at PotashCorp Rocanville
$2.8 billion: Cost of the mine expansion
3.04 million: Mine's annual capacity in tonnes
5.7 million: Mine's annual capacity in tonnes post-expansion
3,100: Feet below surface where mining takes place
1,000: Kilometres of underground tunnels at the mine
270: Positions to be filled at the mine post-expansion
$1 million: Dollars a day being spent on the expansion project
