Business View Magazine | June 2019

301 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE JUNE 2019 SARNI A , ONTAR IO There for you when you need us! Offices in Sarnia, London, Kitchener, Chatham and Stratford. We’re listening... www. cohenh i gh l ey. com 519-344-2020 oversize objects that cannot be accommodated by existing rail or transport truck, permitting large objects fabricated in Sarnia, as well as objects imported to the city’s petrochemical and emerging bio-industrial base, to be more easily moved. The designated road is 26.7 kilometers long. It will be improved by burying utility lines, creating swing arms for the traffic signals, and improving intersections to accommodate movement. “Also, the existing dock sites were not designated or constructed to accommodate the loading or unloading of large equipment. The dock facility will then offer three different methods of loading and unloading: roll-on, roll-off, which will allow loading to be driven onto a barge with no lifting requirement; the gear vessel method would accommodate vessels that have onboard cranes with unrestricted access from the shore to the ship; and then the cargo lifted by shore crane method would use one or two cranes from shore to transfer loads to and from vessels. The city has hired a project manager, who’s met with all the fabrication companies in the City of Sarnia to start this $12 million project. So, far we’ve got about $4 million worth of allocated funds between the City, the county, and the nearby township of St. Clair. Construction starts this year. They’ll be clearing the road so shipments can come from the fabrication shops directly to the site of Nova Chemicals, which announced its own $2 billion project, last summer. “They’re creating a couple of new facilities; one is a new polyethylene facility that will allow them to continue to grow their polyethylene business and high performance applications. This construction is underway and scheduled to be complete by 2021. The other is the Cracker Expansion; this project is linked to the new polyethylene facility and will provide ethylene feedstock. The expansion will increase the existing unit’s current capacity by more than 50 percent. This project is also scheduled for completion in 2021.” Meanwhile, other infrastructure projects are also ongoing in Sarnia, one of which concerns upgrades of the city’s sewer system. “We have a small community within the city called Brights Grove,” says Berkvens. “We completed a new sewage lagoon system in 2017, with a new system called pictured City of Sarnia Parks and Recreation staff planting a tree in beautiful Germain Park, the largest active recreational park in the city.