Sometimes the significance of what is going on right in our back yard is lost within the general population.
What is happening in the Energy City, or more correctly, around the Energy City, is of major importance and perhaps deserves more of our attention and respect.
That fact was brought to the forefront last week with the grand opening of the Sherritt/Norit activated carbon plant at the Bienfait mine. The project came with a $70 million capital cost price tag, yet how many of us were even remotely interested in what was going on there?
Let's put it this way. If a $70 million project had been announced and launched in Humboldt, Foam Lake or Melfort last week, you can bet the populace would have been all over it.
But in this area, well, we have our multi-billion dollar Bakken oil exploration game to play and then there is that little $1.24 billion SaskPower project just a few kilometres down the road, so a $70 million program ... well, it's nice too.
Shame on us for being so jaded so early on in this game.
The scientific, mining and drilling leaders are looking at this region with excitement and yearning, and they're being greeted with a collective yawn.
It's kind of like we're looking over their shoulders, wondering what's next. What's the latest new and wonderful project for us? We have that clean coal thing underway now. We've opened the new activated carbon plant, cut the ribbon for that new $23 million arena complex, learned how to frac the Bakken.
Next!
We have become a bit jaded. We look at all our heavy equipment, big trucks and tractors, drag lines, coal hauling units and none of that stuff turns our heads anymore.
Put one dragline, coal hauler or drilling rig in Humboldt, Melfort or Foam Lake, and they'd organize a party around its arrival.
We've come to rely on our big can-do corporations and suppliers as though there is nothing really special about what they do and how they do it and with what type and size of equipment they use.
People from outside our region express wonderment at our pumpjacks, drilling rigs, rig-moving equipment, coal digging and power generating capabilities. We yawn.
We have a Mona Lisa of the construction industry in our back yard, and perhaps just as the Parisians probably take her presence for granted, we Estevanites have a tendency to do likewise with our major contributions to construction and production as they might do with their art.
We just hope we don't become too underwhelmed. After all, we've experienced the big downside to all of this grandness too.
Our suggestion is that we should be exploiting, promoting and carefully husbanding and planning for our collective futures right about now. Living in the moment can get you into a heap of trouble.
So let us celebrate and properly acknowledge and appreciate our oil wells, coal mines, power plants and superior technology. We know there are thousands of communities around the world that would bend over backwards to grab hold of just one of these resource riches and you could rest assured they would never take it for granted.
Let's make sure we don't.
