Lambton Shores is embracing new technology to provide clean and safe public washrooms year round to visitors.
Mayor Doug Cook said a four-season, self-cleaning, washroom is to be installed at Grand Bend beach.
"It's been on the radar for a while," said Cook. "We know we have a lot of pressure in the summer time trying to maintain our existing washroom facilities that we have down at the beach. So, the company we approached was Urben Blu. We saw their presentation at a conference in Toronto."
The state-of-the-art washroom has an automated cleaning cycle that cleans, dries and sanitizes the whole unit.
"It has two separate toilets. It's on a timer set up, so that we control the timing for the cleaning. It's AODA [Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act] compliant, so it's accessible. It's vandal proof. At this point, we're hoping that it's going to be installed and up and ready for the spring," he said.
Mayor Cook said it will be centrally located.
"It will be near the Rotary stage in Grand Bend, in the upper parking lot, which we call the north parking lot. We have a location picked out there," said Cook. "We figure it will help service the north beach in the summertime, plus give people access all 12 months of the year."
He said he's aware of other municipalities that have them.
"Centre Wellington, [in] Fergus and Elora, and also Ajax has one on the beach in their community too. They were installed prior to ours. Ours took a little bit longer to get into production because we had to change a little bit of the design to make it more AODA compliant," said Cook.
Lambton Shores included $450,000 in its 2023 capital budget to complete the project.
"It's trial and error. We'll figure it out as we go along. But, we've been given reassurances that sand is not an issue at all with these units," he said.