Some good news regarding the Riverside bridge project in the R.M. of Morris. Reeve Ralph Groening says the project has been granted funding under the Municipal Road and Bridge Program.

"We made an application for a hundred and eighty thousand dollar repair project," he explains. "It's a fifty-fifty funding plan so we will receive half of that hundred and eighty thousand dollars from the province of Manitoba."

Groening adds Council is pleased with the approval and is confident the ratepayers will be pleased to finally see this bridge repaired.

He anticipates the repairs, which will get underway in January, will be good for ten to twenty years.

Meantime, the wet fall impacted road and drainage work in the municipality this year.

Groening says improvements will have to happen on the municipality's 225 miles of gravel roads, forcing the 2017 gravel budget to increase.

"We have looked at a few alternatives, we will give consideration to the impact to our ratepayers - our residents, our farmers - but we do know that we must upgrade those roads, it is essential that we do that."

As for drainage, he explains that while forty-five miles was completed this year quite a bit remained leftover.

"We already have a full slate of requests for the 2017 program, sixty miles of drain maintenance that we plan to complete."

Groening notes however, that's not all.

"For the first time since I have been on Council we do already have a queue, we have about half of the 2018 drain plan has already been filled."