By Geoff Smith

Battleford kids help plant trees at old landfill

May 25, 2016 | 5:00 PM

Members of a Battleford service club hope future generations will be able to enjoy land that is currently unusable.

The Battleford Historic Lions were joined Wednesday, May 24 by a busload of students from Battleford Central School, planting trees at the town’s former landfill on the bank of the Battle River. The trees will help reclaim the land for future use as a park.

Club president Marie Millenthorpe explained the trees will consume the contaminants in the soil, a process that will take 80 years to bring the site up to a level of a park and 200 years before the land is usable.

“If you just leave it like this it’ll take a thousand years,” Millenthorpe said. “It’ll reclaim the land a lot quicker.”

Mary Matilla, who helped organize the event for the Lions club, said the group tried two previous years to get trees growing but had difficulty germinating.

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“I think because of our recent rains we should have good luck this year,” Matilla added. She said the trees were ordered from SaskPower’s greenhouse at the Shand power station, and include blue spruce, white spruce, green ash, Siberian crab and sand cherry.

Matilla said the town of Battleford chose the location.

“We’re hoping that they will continue to have trees planted in the community because I think trees really add to any community,” she said.

“We probably won’t get to enjoy the things here, the trees, we’ll watch them grow. But I’ll be gone by the time they’re at a mature stage,” Millenthorpe said. “Most of us are in our seventies. We just hope younger people keep doing it.”

gsmith@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @battlefordsNOW