Green Home Building
Cadillac Homes has been a leader in environmental sustainability for many years.
The municipality of Saanich recognized our environmental effort at Willowbrook when the environmental advisory committee presented Cadillac with the ‘Saanich Environmental Award'. Cadillac Homes won a pair of silver C.A.R.E. awards for ‘Project Of The Year’ and ‘Environmental and Revitalization Achievement.’
Cadillac Homes, winner of the Saanich Environmental Award for our Swan Creek restoration project, was also nominated for the Saanich Biodiversity Achievement award, which recognizes our work in rehabilitating portions of Swan Creek where it runs through Cadillac's 35 home Willowbrook project at 650 McKenzie Avenue.
According to the project's environmental consultant, Patrick Lucey of Aqua-Tex Scientific Consulting Ltd., the creek had deteriorated to a non-functioning state, which put the entire Swan Creek/Blenkinsop Creek watershed at risk.
Cadillac Homes responded by donating the land surrounding the creek as parkland, then provided the funding and assistance needed to restore the creek.
Its efforts have created a working equilibrium in the surrounding watershed not seen in two decades. Ponds were engineered to take 100 per cent of the storm water from the neighbourhood, slow it down and naturally filter it before re-introducing it to the creek. Rocks, logs, flowers and plants such as bull rushes were strategically placed in each pond to help with the eventual return of spawning salmon and continuing regeneration of this small but important ecosystem.
Forty-five students from the University of Victoria, St. Michael's, the Pacific Christian School and volunteers from the Saanich Tree Appreciation Day spent weeks planting up to 40 different species of vegetation. This vegetation was natural to the shoreline before the creek became choked with blackberry bushes. On many days we had more people there planting than we had building houses.