The province is announcing some support for projects taking place in rural municipalities as part of a cooperative program with SARM. Their Rural Integrated Roads for Growth (RIRG) program will see $12.6 million coming from the province for a variety of road related projects, with $21.7 million coming from the rural municipalities.
In the southeast, the RM of Estevan will be doing some road resurfacing to rehabilitate Rafferty Road, with $500,000 coming from the province with a total cost of $1.6 million.
The RM of Eniskillen will also be clay capping a border road to the tune of $400,000, with $200,000 provided by the province, and the RM of Maryfield will put on their own clay cap on Grid Road 600, with a project cost of $756,400 and the province providing $378,200.
SARM President Bill Huber says that he's thankful for the funding which will help out these rural communities.
"We're fortunate and we're glad that there is more funding for the program, which we always need because we've got a lot of bridges that are in dire straits. 80 some percent of them are almost needing repair or beyond repair in some cases, so we're continually requesting funding for that program. That's good news to hear that there's more coming."
32 projects in total are being covered in this announcement, which Huber says is an average number that they'd see in a year.
He hopes to see more progress from the province in the future on this file.
"We're just hoping it continues, and we administer that program on behalf of the Department of Highways and we look forward to continuing that relationship. But it's always about money. We need more dollars because of inflation costs, and construction costs continually rising. So we need that, we got a lot of infrastructure that's needed repairing."
SARM is also meeting with some of its local delegates over the next few days as its annual convention gets underway.