Markham Stouffville Review, December 2023
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DECEMBER <strong>2023</strong><br />
COMMUNITY 3 MARKHAM STOUFFVILLE REVIEW<br />
<strong>Markham</strong>’s power grid gets<br />
$12-million boost<br />
Local Santa Danny Fantini will be out in his antique fire truck this holiday season collecting<br />
toys to help families struggling to make ends meet.<br />
Spreading joy this holiday season<br />
Santa and his helpers hope you will<br />
help The Salvation Army and the CTV Toy<br />
Mountain campaign which brings hope to<br />
families in need.<br />
The pandemic has left many more<br />
families struggling to pay for basic<br />
necessities, much less have money for<br />
presents for their children.<br />
When you support The Salvation Army<br />
and CTV Toy Mountain, you are making<br />
the joy of Christmas possible for families<br />
struggling to make ends meet.<br />
Based on the success of previous years,<br />
organizers are hoping to collect at least 1,000<br />
toys and about $2,000 in gift cards.<br />
Local Santa Danny Fantini will be out<br />
in his antique fire truck in <strong>Markham</strong>.<br />
You can visit Santa and his helpers at<br />
the Pride of Canada Carousel (corner of<br />
Birchmount Rd. and Enterprise Blvd.) on<br />
Saturdays and Sundays between 1 and 4 p.m.<br />
from Dec. 2 to 17.<br />
CTV News will be with Santa at the<br />
carousel on Dec. 15 during its 6 p.m. news<br />
program.<br />
Visit toymountain.ca for more information.<br />
As the demand for electricity continues<br />
to grow, Alectra Utilities will invest more<br />
than $12 million in <strong>Markham</strong>’s power grid,<br />
an investment that will impact more than<br />
30,000 homes and businesses.<br />
“With parts of <strong>Markham</strong>’s system<br />
reaching the end of its life cycle, renewing<br />
the deteriorating infrastructure is necessary<br />
to maintain reliability,” says Mike Matthews,<br />
Executive Vice President of Asset Strategy<br />
and Operations at Alectra.<br />
Alectra has earmarked $9.6 million<br />
to rehabilitate underground cables using<br />
an innovative technology called ‘cable<br />
injection,’ which repairs, protects and<br />
extends the life of underground cables<br />
without digging them up. Underground<br />
cables cost less to maintain and have a much<br />
longer lifespan than overhead wires, Alectra<br />
reports, but can start to break down over time<br />
from exposure to moisture in the ground.<br />
Cable injection can extend the life of an<br />
aging cable by up to 20 years by injecting<br />
a silicone-based fluid into the cable. The<br />
silicone forces out the moisture, fills in<br />
the weak spots and hardens to repair the<br />
cable and helps to prevent power outages,<br />
Alectra explains. For every kilometre of<br />
cable injection, it avoids about 13 tonnes<br />
of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that<br />
would have been created by its replacement.<br />
To date, Alectra has injected more than 820<br />
kilometres of underground cable across the<br />
17 communities it serves, avoiding more<br />
than 10,000 tonnes of GHG emissions.<br />
Alectra will also invest $1.5 million<br />
to renew overhead assets including pole<br />
remediation, $826,000 to replace and<br />
upgrade stations within <strong>Markham</strong> and<br />
$192,000 to construct new automated<br />
devices. “This series of infrastructure<br />
upgrades will stabilize the existing<br />
system and reduce outage impacts in the<br />
community,” says Matthews.<br />
Learn more at alectrautilities.com/<br />
improving-reliability.