It was at a well attended meeting of the Ontonagon Village Council that village manager Joe Erickson recapped a meeting he attended with Governor Rick Snyder. The Governor recently visited the Upper Peninsula to discuss infrastructure and electric power generation.

The Village of Ontonagon extended it’s contract with White Pine Electric for an additional 10 years to 2032 in order to give WPE the chance to recoup it’s $200,000 investment in a transformer. The contract between White Pine Electric and the village was to expire in 6 years.

The Village of Ontonagon was hit hard with the July 21 storm. Much of the village was without power for most of the day. Last week a portion of the downtown Ontonagon district had a power outage that lasted for approximately a half hour due to a transformer failure.

Erickson commented at the village council meeting about one of the assets the community has over other communities in the Upper Peninsula.

“Here in the village, we have a large capacity of water. This is something other communities don’t have the capacity we have,” commented Erickson.

This spring the Ontonagon County Economic Development Corporation discussed the opportunity to bring a water bottling plant to the county. It was the Village of Ontonagon that provided water to Smurfit-Stone paper mill, which closed in 2009. The village had permits to provide water for this mill by drawing water from Lake Superior.

The topic of dredging Ontonagon Harbor was also on the meeting agenda. Erickson reported that the dredging of the Harbor continues. Erickson also stated that bids for the dredging of the village’s marina will begin immediately. The village is working with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Department of Environmental Quality on the dredging of the harbor.

Rain and high winds damaged the village’s River Street Garage roof. Damages of $32,845.00 were submitted to the village insurance carrier. Council agreed to look at possible changes to the roof. The changes would be dependent upon additional charges outside of the Insurance reimbursement. Temporary patches are currently in place.