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Oct 17: Surrey Water Quality Project Receives...

The Surrey Water Quality Project Receives Environmental Award

Surrey, October 17, 2001 - The Pacific Community Enhancement Society (PCES) has received a $20,000 EnviroFund award from Vancity Credit Union for its Canadian Grate Mate Program designed to help reduce water pollution in Lower Mainland locations, including Surrey.

The Grate Mate is a special cloth filter bag with an oil absorbent package that is installed in parking lot catch basins, where it can capture oil, silt and other debris that flow into rivers and streams through storm water. The grant will be used to support the installation and monitoring of the grates by volunteers, with the aim of reducing pollution by 75 per cent in the areas where installed. The project starts this fall and will continue until next spring.

PCES is one of five organizations to receive a total of $80,000 in EnviroFund grants this year in the communities Vancity serves.

Vancity's EnviroFund was established in 1990 to support local community initiatives which address specific environmental concerns and has awarded more than $802,000 since then. All three of Vancity's VISA cards (the Vancity EnviroFund VISA, Vancity Travel VISA and the Vancity Gold VISA) support the EnviroFund, with a minimum of five per cent of VISA card profits donated to the fund each year.

Vancity is Canada's largest credit union with $7.3 billion in assets, 271,000 members, and 39 branches throughout Greater Vancouver, the Fraser Valley and Victoria. Vancity owns Citizens Bank of Canada, serving members across the country by telephone, ATM, and the Internet. Both Vancity and Citizens Bank are guided by a commitment to corporate social responsibility, and to improve the quality of life in the communities where we live and work.