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(Posted 4:30
a.m., Feb. 12)
Council poised to raise water and sewer rates by 10%
By Fred Sherwin
Orléans Online
Less
than two weeks after voting to raise taxes by 3.77 per cent, city council appears
poised to raise water and sewer rates by 10 per cent. The
increase is being blamed on the need to fix aging infrastructure and prevent sewage
overflows into the Ottawa River. The
10 per cent rate hike is expected to be endorsed by the planning and environment
committee on Feb. 23. In real dollar terms it equates to an extra $56 per household
on top of the property tax increase which equates to $138 for the average home. Besides
reducing sewage overflows, the money generated by the water and sewer rate hike
will be used to prevent flooding in the west end, and metering and billing improvements. According
to Dixon Weir, the city’s general manager of environmental services, said
more than 70 per cent of the funds will be put towards infrastructure renewal. This
is the final year of a three year plan to raise water and sewer rates by 30 per
cent that began with a 12 per cent increase in 2007. After a nine per cent increase
was adopted last year, the rate was supposed to go up by by another nine per cent
this year, but city council decided to shift one per cent in administration costs
from the tax bill to the water and sewer bill to keep the tax hike under four
per cent. The
move was reluctantly supported by planning and environment committee chair Peter
Hume who warned against it becoming a dangerous trend. “We
shouldn’t be relying on the water rate to fund costs that aren’t related
to the provision of water service,” he said. “It’s not so much
that it’s a problem this year, but if it starts to become a trend …
you’re not making decisions in the best interests of the water system.” The
latest 10 per cent increase won`t be applied to water and sewere bills until after
city council approves the hike, which is expected to happen on March 24. News
of a third major increase in the city’s water and sewer rates in as many
years comes on the heels of the proposed plan to spend $252 million to address
the ongoing issue of sewage overflows into the Ottawa River. The
plan calls for the construction of one or more huge, subterranean storm water
storage facilities within the city’s inner core. The storahe facilities would
likely be linear, for example a deep tunnel running west to east through the downtown
or near the shoreline, possibly extending as far as the Robert O. Pickard water
treatment plant in Canotek Park. The
tunnels would collect storm water in the event of a severe weather event and then
slowly release it into the regular storm water management system over time. (This
story was made possible thanks to thie generous support of our local
business partners.) Return
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