The village of Lucky Lake has been selected as one of twelve community airports to receive funding from the Government of Saskatchewan.

The village will receive over $61,000 from the provincial government that will be matched by the community to upgrade their airport through the Community Airport Partnership (CAP) program.

Melanie Dyck is the CAO for the Village of Lucky Lake and the RM of Canaan and said that the funding will help maintain the airport for a long time.

"We are a community airport and there's only so many of them in the province," she said. "It means that we will be able to have funding to be able to maintain that airport for probably at least the next ten years."

Dyck says that with the money they received they hope to be able to smooth out the runway.

"The funding that we applied for specifically was to do crack sealing and surface sealing on the runway," she said. "It's been almost a decade since that was done. Right now the takeoffs and landings are quite rough for the users and that crack filling and sealing will be done which will smooth the surface and then we will also repaint the lines, so the funding will cover that project."

Dyck said that the airport isn't used by a lot of people currently, but she's hoping with the improvements that might change.

"We have probably only a handful of personal users," she said. "Farmers and business owners that have their own planes that would use it for personal or business reasons. Besides that the 15 Wing Moose Jaw for touchdowns and practices and things like that. We have local crop fairs and other business that would use the runway, but also we are hoping in the future we'll be able to take STARS landings here which is quite important because we are an hour and a half from the closest city."

Lucky Lake joins Swift Current and Shaunavon as the only southwest communities to receive funding. Dyck said that she is grateful that they were chosen.

"It makes it even more special that we got the funding," she said. "To be recognized that we need the funding and that we are only one of three, they obviously recognize that there is a need in our area for that airport and that the maintenance of it is important, so it is great to have that recognition."

Lucky Lake has received funding from the CAP program before. The village's airport has received over $115,000 that has been matched by the community raising the total to over $230,000 for the airport.