Muskoka landscaping company Rugged Earth was installing permeable paving at the new Minden Animal Hospital on June 24. Permeable paving filters out pollutants that regular paving passes along into the watertable via runoff thereby helping to improve local water quality. /CHAD INGRAM Staff By Chad Ingram
Permeable paving was being installed at the new Minden Animal Hospital along Booth Street on June 24 a day that Coalition of Haliburton Property Owners’ Associations chairman Paul MacInnes was calling a history-making one in the county.
The parking lot at the clinic owned by MacInnes’s daughter Dr. Jennifer Morrow is the first known permeable paving project in Haliburton County.
Permeable paving is a method of paving that allows for the infiltration of liquids. In this way the pavement reduces runoff and actually acts as a filter of contaminants such as phosphorous copper nitrogen and zinc as well as suspended solids. Its use is becoming more widespread.
“In the Lake Simcoe area permeable paving is becoming almost mandatory” MacInnes told county councillors at a meeting earlier this spring and he is encouraging anyone undertaking paving projects to consider permeable paving because of its benefits for lake health.
The paving was done by Rugged Earth a landscaping company out of Muskoka.
