Business View Civil & Municipal | Volume 2, Issue 11

77 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 2, ISSUE 11 development not happening, it didn’t become critical. You don’t want to spend $30 million and then hope the development comes. But now we’ve moved into the critical side and we’re currently doing an addendum to the EA.” With the updated assessment expected to be completed in March of 2022, Armstrong adds, “We will probably be rolling right into design to expand the plant to deal with all the growth that we’re experiencing. There is a two-prong approach to that, though, we are also treating double the water that we’re producing, which means that we’re getting a lot of inflow and infiltration into the sewage system, which eats up capacity. So, council is just about to improve a very aggressive infrastructure replacement program and we’re hoping that will give us more allocation sooner than the more expensive plant expansion.” Increasing broadband is an ongoing project in the municipality. Rural areas are benefiting from the Southwestern Integrated Fibre Technology (SWIFT) project, a non-profit initiative aimed at improvement of broadband and internet connectivity in rural areas across Southwestern Ontario. Armstrong recounts, “We do have some fiber in town, and we have a number of smaller groups that are expanding out to those areas not covered for fiber, it’s slow going, but we know that it’s required, and it is happening. If a business needs high speed fiber internet, we can get it to them at a very reasonable price. It is all very doable in our area with the number of companies that we have.” The availability of fiber has been a huge selling feature for the community throughout the pandemic. As Mayor Clumpus explains, “We’ve had our seasonal residents come up to isolate in their cottages and they have discovered that they can work from their homes up here. That is really helping us, as well as our neighboring municipalities, in attracting new residents because they’ve discovered that they can leave MEAFORD , ONTAR IO