Business View Civil & Municipal - May 2023

145 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 4, ISSUE 5 is a popular area of the township. Chippawa Park, and Wainfleet Bog conservation areas are other sought Wainfleet destinations being offered by the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority. One of the challenges for any rural community is broadband connectivity, and the township of Wainfleet is no exception. CAO William Kolasa recounts, “We were inundated with public requests and concerns from the community about the absence of stable high-speed connectivity, especially as we were going into the pandemic and more people were doing remote work, remote schooling, all that sort of stuff.” He reports that in 2022 Rogers Communications pledged to bring fiber lines to all of the underserved areas of the municipality, addressing the major gaps that have been a long-time concern. He adds, “Our operations department has been working very closely with Rogers in doing all the necessary permitting and providing all the necessary assistance for them to get those fiber lines laid within our road network. With those lines in place, which is an ongoing project, we will actually be seeing all areas of the township having access to high speed internet connectivity, fiber right to the house, which we’re really excited about and very pleased to see finally happening in Wainfleet.” Severe weather events have been another significant issue for the township, impacting municipal infrastructure and private residential property. “We’ve had some serious fall storms. Most recently, we declared a state of emergency over the 2022 Christmas holidays due to a major blizzard that affected most of the southern Niagara region. We were very hard hit,” says Kolasa. “As part of our efforts to address that; we’ve identified, this year, a major capital project that involves undertaking restorative work to the most heavily damaged areas, as well as making improvements to make sure that any future issues that we might have can be appropriately dealt with, with correct drainage, improved road conditions, everything necessary to keep the public safe.” As for other major projects, Wainfleet is in the process of amalgamating 2 public schools and one Catholic TOWNSHI P OF WA INFLEET ’