Community looking to profit from aggregate

By Rick Garrick

The Red Rock Indian Band is looking to profit from about $500,000 worth of aggregate from a Highway 11 construction project.
“That’s nothing but money for us; it can’t go bad,” says former Red Rock Indian Band chief Pierre Pelletier during a late July interview. “It’s rock, but its a gold mine for us.”

The Robinson Superior community obtained the aggregate from a $2.8 million Highway 11 construction project at Deadman’s Corner or Smith Bay that the band worked on in partnership with Taranis Contracting Group this summer. Pelletier, who did not run in the Sept. 12 band election, says the community is looking to sell the aggregate as a finished byproduct over the next couple of years.  “Or we can use all of the product when we do our own reserve,” Pelletier says. “We’ll need granular A, we’ll need granular B, we’ll have it all.”

The band won the bid for the construction project in partnership with Taranis, a construction company located in Thunder Bay. The band was the general contractor for the project, which employed 13 community members as truck drivers, flag people and security personnel. The band earned more than $200,000 in revenue from the project.

“We feel partnerships is the only way ahead,” Pelletier says. “There is no way any First Nation can take on jobs like this — we don’t have the expertise, we don’t have a lot of the (equipment) we need to make it happen.”  After project was completed, Taranis hired five of the construction workers as full-time employees.

“When we’re looking at these types of projects, employment is one of the biggest things that we look at — money is money, but jobs are a lifetime,” says Red Rock Indian Band Councillor Kirstine Baccar in a late July interview. “We put our people through heavy equipment operators training, we put our people through Craft Construction Worker training to ensure that we maximize our opportunities on these partnerships.”

Baccar, who was re-elected in the Sept. 12 band election, says there is a “huge need” for aggregate in the region.  “There is so much work happening in the region,” Baccar says. “Everyone is hurting, townships are hurting for the aggregate.”

The band transported the aggregate to an old Ministry of Natural Resources base that was transferred to the community a few years ago through a land settlement process. The base is located at the southeast corner of the community.

“As a council, we worked long and hard on this (settlement) to get this property,” Pelletier says. “The biggest thing for us was, it (is) a key place for us to expand — we only have 10 building lots left. Now we’ve got access to maybe a 100.”

Pelletier says the band cleaned up the MNR base after discovering an old dump on the site.  “When we took it over, we did an environmental (survey) on it,” Pelletier says. “It’s all passed now, so this is all reserve land now.”