The Reeve of Piney is pleased that the province is cleaning out some provincial drainage ditches that had become overgrown with foliage in recent years. Wayne Anderson says Piney had lobbied the province to do the work and it finally got underway last fall. He notes it is vital to the municipality's drainage strategy that these drains be kept clear because, otherwise, they cause local flooding issues.

"It (water) backs up further than it should onto the farmers' fields. All the drains don't have that much tolerance on them. They can't have a few extra feet of water anywhere because if you get beaver dams or brush clogging up the drains, they don't flow freely."

Anderson says most of the clean-up work was done in the fall and will be completed this spring. He adds council recently passed a resolution asking the province to expand the clean-up of the piney-west drain to include some reconstruction to restore it to its original design specifications.

"It was a resolution to support a little larger project for one of the drains that needs a little bit of reconstruction. We put through a resolution to try and get that project moving."