Nov-2017

238 239 ST. CLAIR TOWNSHIP, ONTARIO here. Because we have so much waterfront,we feel that would be successful.We also have two vacation islands in the St. Clair River that we supply with mu- nicipal water. Stag Island and Fawn Island are popu- lar summer destinations. Fawn Island actually has no more room for development; they’re just taking down the old cottages and building new.” BVM: What’s happening in the way of green/sus- tainable initiatives in the Township? RODEY: “In terms of shoreline protection,we’ve been ripping out old seawalls and replacing them with armour stone,which is more conducive to habitat. In addition,we’ve done a fair bit of park development.We always had concerns because our downstream neighbour,Walpole Island First Nation, still takes their drinking water supply from the St. Clair River, so we’re very sensitive about what we do with the water flow.” MAYOR ARNOLD: “We did two large projects in Wilkesport and Brigden–installing sanitary sewers and sewage treatment plants.That cleaned up the adjacent Sydenham River immensely.We’ve also done green initiative studies on our arena and other buildings, but the structures aren’t strong enough to support solar panels.We do help facilitate private investors, though, including 650 acres of solar instal- lations on buildings, so we have been successful that way.We also changed 1700 streetlights to LED, and received rebates from Hydro One for that. “Another initiative is installing buffer system in- frastructure along our municipal drains, so we’re not n Brandon Contractors www.brandoncontractors.com PREFERRED VENDOR contributing to the phosphorous increase in the Great Lakes basin.We’ve partnered with the St. Clair Region- al Conservation Authority, Shell, and Enbridge to do tree planting, and reclaimmarginal farmland with tall prairie grass and trees.We’re taking ‘brownfields’ out of the vocabulary.‘Almost greenfields again’ is what I like to call them. “Down the road we’ll continue to do everything we can to mitigate issues for the good of the environment. That’s going to become part of doing business.” 519-383-8895 WWW.BRANDONCONTRACTORS.COM GENERAL CONTRACTING IN SOUTHWESTERN ONTARIO SERVICES When you need civil construction or general contracting work completed, call Brandon Contractors, the problem solver with over 25 years of experi- ence serving Sarnia, Lambton and Southwestern Ontario. We provide commercial and industrial clients with products and services ranging from excavation to site servicing, trucking to demolition, and equipment rentals to float moves. n Excavating & Bulldozing n Equipment Rentals n General Contracting n Site Work & Servicing n Trucking n Float Services n Demolition