The tale of an unexpectedly realistic April Fool’s Day joke
View over the city of Fort St. John, BC/ Canada (source: flickr/ waferboard, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
4 Apr 2016
If a city that could derive heating from geothermal resources, sees it as an April Fool's Day topic ... then the joke is on geothermal, the realistic heating alternative.
In an attempt of a funny April Fool’s Day joke, the city of Fort St. John in British Columbia, Canada issued a release on April 1st.
The piece reads like this: “In a recent closed meeting City Council approved the use of a drilling rig on the old hospital site on 100th Avenue to access geothermal heat. The heat accessed from this site will be piped throughout the city using storm drains and will be sufficiently warm enough to melt snow from the roads even on the coldest winter days. The rig is already set up and drilling will commence early next week (photo attached).
“This is the perfect location for the rig,” stated Mayor Ackerman. “It is in a central part of the city so we can have the heat pumped throughout our core roads making them so much safer for our citizens.” City storm drains run underneath all city roads so they are the perfect vehicle to pump the heat through to warm the roads and melt the snow. This is the first time in North America a city has tapped into this heat source for road maintenance.
“People in our region are used to seeing drilling rigs but to have one right downtown is a bit unusual so we will be adding some flowering shrubs around the rig and at Christmas we will put lights on it. We can really make that area look nice,” stated Grounds Manager Chris Murphy. On average the City snow removal budget is $1.3 million per year. It is anticipated that the City will save in excess of $10 million dollars on snow removal costs in the next decade and much of the existing vehicle fleet can be sold off.
“Over the past several years, the City of Fort St. John has made it a priority to conserve water and energy, and ultimately reduce both costs and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from its corporate operations and at the community level. This program will keep our snow removal vehicles off the road and reduce emissions,” stated Victor Shopland, General Manager of Integrated Services. The City looks forward to snow free roads next winter and wishes all citizens a very happy April Fool’s Day.
END of the release.
Well … the funny story is, geothermal heating is not that much of a joke, particularly in this part of Canada and could indeed help this city to derive heating for the city, streets and houses from geothermal energy. … really no joke. 😉
Source: City of St. John release (pdf)
