gazette@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Chris Redmond) (02/28/91)
Draft text for next Wednesday's Gazette follows.
(Note that I think the details of the plans for a
"hazardous waste facility") are more vague and preliminary
than this draft suggests -- will have more details by
the time the Gazette comes out.)
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The job-creation money is waiting -- all $2,446,600 of it -- and
now priorities must be set on what to do
with it.
There's no shortage of ideas on how to spend UW's
share of grants from the provincial anti-recession program,
says Shaun Sloan, director of plant operations.
"We will go over our list, and then we'll be preparing
documents, calling tenders and getting down to work," he said,
The money must be spent by March 31, 1992.
"We can put the money towards projects of our choice,
in accordance with our priorities. We have a lot of
leeway on what we can pick."
Under the terms of the program, the projects must be
labour-intensive, as Queen's Park wants to reduce
high unemployment during the current recession.
"We will hire people in addition to our normal workforce,"
Sloan said.
A hefty chunk of the grant -- $500,000 -- will
build a floor inside the
Centre for Integrated Manufacturing
building, connected to the Davis Centre.
The floor will be positioned in what is now a research lab
with an extra-high ceiling.
The rest of the grant -- $1,946,400 -- will go to
a hazardous waste building, between
Chemistry 1 and Physics buildings, and "deferred maintenance"
projects.
"The projects cover a wide spectrum," Sloan said.
"We have some very labour intensive ones."
Among them is a project to paint and clean the pipes in
the tunnels, a gruelling job that hasn't been performed for at least
10 years.
"There are a lot of pipes in the tunnel that need care,
but we haven't had the labour to do it," Sloan said.
"This is the only opportunity we really have to do this
sort of thing."
The hazardous waste storage building, he said,
will largely be underground. "We will save a lot of
people's time. trucking wastes up to the north campus
storage unit, which is about to be condemned."
Also on the agenda: repairing roofs, reconstructing bridges
over Laurel Creek ("getting in a bad state"),
recorking of buildings, upgrading walks and roads, and
replacing drainage piping, faucets and valves.
The campus chilled-water plant, as well as the cooling system
in earth sciences, could be improved to boost energy savings,
Sloan added.