SUPPORTING OUR COMMUNITIES

Near our Mole Creek Plant in Tasmania, AU, the Mole Creek Progress Association received 2024 Graymont Carbon Reduction Fund (GCRF) funding to install a new solar heating system and pool cover to facilitate the reopening of the community swimming pool, which had been closed for nearly three years. The Mole Creek Primary School, situated directly across the street from the pool, will now resume its swimming and water safety lessons locally, reducing travel needs and strengthening community ties.

❝ We are thrilled to announce that our community swimming pool has reopened, thanks to the generous funding for a new pool cover with automatic rollers and a solar heating system. The new solar heating system will significantly enhance the pool’s usability, allowing us to maintain warmer temperatures throughout the year. This improvement is particularly beneficial for the local primary school, which can resume its learn-to-swim program and host swimming carnivals, fostering essential water safety skills and community spirit. Additionally, the warmer pool temperatures will enable us to extend the swimming season, providing more opportunities for everyone to enjoy the pool in our cold climate. ❞

╴Lauren Cohen, Secretary, Mole Creek Progress Association

The Tree Board of the City of Townsend used GCRF funding to purchase many trees to reinvigorate its community forests in neighbouring Townsend and Broadwater counties. Volunteers are area residents, embers of local service clubs, students enrolled in Broadwater County High School’s horticultural class, and our Indian Creek colleagues. Since 2004, this stalwart group of volunteers has essentially been managing the Townsend community forest on its own, assuming responsibility for tree inventories, tree pruning and removals, tree planting, and tree care, including spraying over 1,000 trees to protect them from insects and disease. The city does not have a community forester or forestry department.

❝ City funding for the Tree Board has been sporadic over the years, and the Tree Board has depended on sales of trees to private citizens, private tree planting services, private tree pruning and removal services, donations, and grants to raise enough money to fund tree purchases and other tree management expenses each year. The average age of most volunteers doing 85% of the work for the Tree Board is 75 years. These volunteers have slowed down over the years and cannot work the long days of volunteering they used to do. As a result, more days have been needed to raise the money required to pay for trees, and less work has been done to maintain existing trees. The GCRF funding means that the aging volunteers can spend more time caring for (i.e. pruning, watering, and spraying for disease and insects) existing trees in the community forest. The Tree Board thanks Graymont for its help in improving the community forest in the Townsend area. ❞

╴Patrick Plantenberg, Chair, The Tree Board of the City of Townsend

North of the Canada-US border in Alberta, the Canmore Community Cruisers Bike Share Society used its 2023 funding to support its Bike All Winter program to help residents near our Exshaw Plant winterize their bicycles. Participants received free or subsidized equipment, training on winter cycling techniques, and mentorship — promoting sustainable transportation during harsh winter conditions. Key community benefits of the program include: reduction in GHG emissions and local air pollution due to reducing motor vehicle use; more people on bicycles make the roads safer for everyone; bicycling is an efficient and economical way to get around, and people on bicycles feel connected to their community and support local business.

❝ Thanks to the Graymont Carbon Reduction Fund grant, the Community Cruisers Bike All Winter program winterized the bikes of 100 residents of Banff and Canmore. Participants received assistance to winterize their bike, including subsidized winter bicycle tires, lights, and fenders, training on winter bike riding, as well as a Bike All Winter mentor in exchange for a commitment to ride their bike in winter. ❞

╴Jen Tweddell, Board President, Canmore Community Cruisers Bike Share Society

The Harden Murrumburrah Landcare Group (HMLG), a not-for-profit community organization of landholders, farming families and local businesses, who have been collaborating for more than 30 years to revegetate and enhance the biodiversity of land near the village of Galong in the State of New South Wales (NSW), in eastern Australia. The funding from the GCRF will enable HMLG to acquire and plant up to 10,000 additional native trees and shrubs, significantly enhancing the terrain’s ability to sequester and store carbon and enabling the land to be managed in a more sustainable manner.

❝ This exciting project offers members of HMLG the opportunity to apply for up to 2,000 native trees and shrubs to plant on their land. The funding will purchase a total of 10,000 plants for the group, to help protect the environment through enhancing or restoring areas of native vegetation, in an area of critically low levels of remaining natural habitat. ❞

╴Julie Roberts, Coordinator of HMLG