The RM of Louise is making steady progress in bringing natural gas into the municipality.

Doug Collins is a municipal councillor from Pilot Mount and chair of the Growth and Prosperity Stakeholders group which is made up of six rural municipalities, 13 urban communities and 11 Hutterite colonies. The group is spearheading a multi-million dollar proposal to bring natural gas into the south central part of the province.

Collins feels they're getting close to seeing the project become a reality.

"The engineering is done and all the preliminary is done. It's basically shovel ready. Hydro will be the entity that looks after construction and will run this after its complete. So, we're all ready to go and we're just looking for the funding part of it."

The project comes with a price tag of about $53 million which would be cost-shared across all three levels of government. Under the proposal, $26.5 million dollars would come from federal funding, $13.2 million dollars from the province and the remaining $13.3-million would be picked up by the participating municipalities and customers.

Collins says he'd like to see the project get started in 2021 which would be especially good timing.

"This COVID situation has been tough on everybody, particularly small businesses, rural communities and urban areas. We need to do all we can to help recover the economy as quickly as possible when this is over and sustain it and this is one project that will definitely sustain the economy for years to come."