NOVA Chemicals is set to connect with its Joffre area neighbours tonight (April 18th) as they host a bi-annual community open house.

Site Leader Rick Van Hemmen says he really looks forward to every chance he has to talk with the public.

“They really provide two opportunities; the first one is for NOVA to share anything that’s going on in our business, anything that we think might be of interest to the community, and the flip side of that though, which is really more important for us, it gives us an opportunity to get input from the community.  We like to hear the community’s questions, if there are any concerns”.

Van Hemmen says he'll be providing an update on any activities on site that may be visible to area residents.

(E2 Furnace Refurbishment Project started in 2014, photo courtesy of NOVA's Siteline Community News)

“Any shutdowns, any major outages that may result in a bit of flaring that might be visible, we like to let the community know about those, we let them know whether or not there’s going to be lots of people on site that are going to create an impact and we do have a couple of outages and a small turn around this year in NOVA Chemicals at one of our plants and we certainly let them know all of things we’re doing to make sure that we are minimizing  any impacts on the community as any of our activities take place”.

His talk will also include an update on some ongoing projects.

“Furnace refurbishment project in our ethylene 2 plant, this has been going on for a number of years and we’re just at the tail end of phase one and about to enter phase 2 where we will be upgrading several more of our furnaces, so we’ll let them know how that’s going.  We’ve recently installed a new retention pond which was a very visible construction activity on the site and we’re in the process of commissioning that now, so we’ll give the community an update on that as well”.

Some information will also be shared about NOVA’s sponsorship of the 2019 Canada Winter Games.

Van Hemmen co-hosts the open house along with the Site Leader for the INEOS plant at Joffre.

It's all happening at the Haynes Hall, a drop in to chat from 5:30-6:30 pm and a presentation and discussion from 6:30-7:30 pm.