The Greater Moncton SPCA is looking to build a new facility in Caledonia Industrial Park to replace the more than 35-year-old current building.
The proposed $5.8 million shelter would have state-of-the-art equipment like stainless steel wash bays, plastic kennels and proper air exchangers.
“We’re not actually up to standards that we should be for care of animals,” said SPCA executive director Dave Rogers. “The air handling system is grossly inadequate. In the summer time. the humidity is stifling, we don’t exchange air properly, that breeds disease.”
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Nanette Pearl, who’s in charge of animal welfare at the SPCA, explained the importance of that.
“Our air exchange is really, really poor, so any airborne disease is staying in our building and our surfaces are all porous,” Nanette Pearl explained. “So as much scrubbing and disinfecting that we do, it is still concrete, it’s still porous and while we fight the good fight, it is hard to maintain disease control.”
These issues have forced the organisation to look into getting a new building.
“We would be moving into a building approximately the same size footage we have now, our kennels would be slightly less in number, but the kennel would be larger” said Rogers
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So far the organisation has put aside $1 million to start the project and have asked Moncton city council for help and plan on approaching both Dieppe and Riverview city councils for added financial support.
“We’ll probably make a presentation to the province. It’s important for us to get a good footing with the government organisations because their the ones we deal most closely with,” Rogers added.
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The goal is to be in the new building by 2020.