Slow progress made on rehabilitating a portion of Turner Valley’s heritage site thwarted plans to get the facility open for regular tours this year.
The Turner Valley Oilfields Society hoped to come to an agreement with Alberta Culture and Tourism to open the Turner Valley Gas Plant to regular tours this summer, but is unable to do so until work to turn the lab/office building into an administrative building with bathrooms is complete.
“It turns out the work will not be complete until late 2015,” said Earl Martin, chairman of the Turner Valley Oilfields Society and former employee of the gas plant. “We’ve had a delay which, unfortunately, we would have liked to avoid. We had a certain amount of momentum going that we could have maintained, but it was not possible.”
Martin is referring to the centennial celebration of Dingman No. 1 that took place at the gas plant in the spring of 2014, attracting more than two thousand people to the site. Following the event, the Province opened the provincial heritage site to the public on weekends from July to the end of September, bringing 446 visitors and collecting $2,700 in donations - enough to offset the cost of the two tour guides.
So far this year, seven pre-scheduled guided tours took place with 148 people attending and another four inquiries have been made for group tours in September and October.
Visitors tour the Dingman No. 1 discovery well, Dingman No. 2 well, light plant, compressor plant, scrubbing plant and the gasoline and propane plant.
Martin said the society and Province are working on a service agreement to allow for regular tours, but it hasn’t yet been finalized.
“Our current plan is to get the agreement in place and be ready to commence tours in May 2016,” he said. “We want it to be open to the public six or seven days a week.”
Martin said the society needs donations to fund two or three staff members throughout those months, which he estimates will cost about $30,000. He said fundraising will begin in late fall.
“Alberta Infrastructure advised the work won’t be complete until late 2015 and no public tours would be allowed until that building is complete,” he said. “We had two organizations willing to give us money and we probably could have had another two or three.
We didn’t take the money because we weren’t confident the project would be complete.”
Catherine Whalley, executive director of historic sites and the museum branch with Alberta culture and Tourism, said the Turner Valley Gas Plant wasn’t in any condition to welcome the public onto the site this summer.
In addition to having no public washrooms, Whalley said ongoing work to redevelop the historic lab/office resulted in the entrance to the site being under the control of the construction company.
“Small, unanticipated challenges arose with the gas plant including sourcing the materials needed to do the work,” she said.
Whalley said the contract to rehabilitate the lab/office building was awarded a year ago and the $1.4 million project should be complete at the end of this month.
“It is a little later than we originally noted,” she said. “At the time we were working towards mid-summer and regretfully we didn’t quite make that.”
In the meantime, the Province has been meeting with the Turner Valley Oilfields Society throughout the spring and summer on developing a formal relationship, Whalley said.
“As we do with a number of our historic sites and museums across the province we look to form partnerships with community and regional groups to assist us in our operations,” she said.
“We are indeed interested in working with the Turner Valley Oilfields Society in the ultimate operation and programming of the site.”
While a partnership has begun, Whalley said funding could be the biggest challenge.
“The outstanding question is whether or not we’ll have an operating budget for next year,” he said. “The answer to that question is still not confirmed because budget discussions and deliberations are currently ongoing within the government. Once we have a better idea of that we will be more informed to go back and discuss with the Oilfields society what could be happening around operations.”
The Turner Valley Oilfields Society will hold its annual general meeting at the Sheep River Library on Sept. 15 at 7 p.m.
