Fixing and building

Politicians love infrastructure. And by love, I mean that complicated kind we feel for wives, husbands, sisters and brothers. It is uneven, ebbing and flowing, sometimes volatile. Heartbreaking at times. Yet nothing brings a broader smile, or a warmer glow, to a politician’s face than when cutting a ribbon or grasping a ceremonial spade in front of a grand new infrastructure project.

Surely the best example, close to home at least, is the sewage treatment plant in Picton. It is hard to imagine a project having gone worse—from beginning to end. Everything from the cost, the planning, the location and the operation went wrong. Original estimates pegged the price tag at about $10 million. By the time the province and federal government agreed to help to pony up a share of the cost of the project, each paying a third, the price had risen to $18 million.

When it opened, and was finally made to work as it was supposed to, the cost had soared to well in excess of $30 million.

Then they started the pumps. Pushing Picton’s waste up the hill, processing it, and pumping it back down. This is when things really became expensive. It turns out it costs lots and lots of money to push crap up and down a hill every day. Much, much more than hired planners and consultants had figured. But, in fairness, how could they know? It is not everyday a town decides to do something this wacky. And those who do, likely aren’t talking about it.

Yet, I can see Picton’s sewage treatment plant becoming a case study on how not to do infrastructure. A warning to the brash and naïve.

I can see, in my mind’s eye, college classes arriving by the busload and gazing down over the town of Picton, from the heights of the new sewage treatment plant. I can see them asking themselves questions like: Why on earth did these people put the receiving end of a gravity fed collection system way up on this hill? With such a great view?

Inevitably they would get to the more troublesome questions, such as: Why did the town’s planners not build additional capacity into the plant? Communities build these things once or twice a century— why wouldn’t they have built the facility anticipating growth?

Of course, the risk is that the Picton sewage plant becomes shorthand for every manner of infrastructure screw-up. It would be bad if elected officials elsewhere began vowing never to allow a Picton to happen in their community. Or a planner promising council not to Picton their proposed project. Or a teary-eyed politician, standing before microphones and cameras begging forgiveness for have allowed a Picton to bring a major infrastructure project to its knees and igniting a taxpayer revolt.

The sewage plant project was a fiasco—by every measure. And, even on its very best day, it was a sewage plant. Yet when the day came for the first spade to go into the ground—a long row of politicians climbed the hill to smile broadly and bask in the glow that only big infrastructure projects throw off.

All this is to say that politicians love to spend your money on big things. Things they can put their name on. Things they can point to when they ask voters to re-elect them.

The cynic might complain that they simply enjoy spending other people’s money. I tend not to share that view. I believe, in their hearts, politicians are builders. They enjoy seeing ideas emerge from paper and become a real service and benefit to their community.

And certainly if federal and provincial governments are driving around with truckloads of infrastructure dollars, by all means, we should encourage them to back into the County and offload here.

But let us not be confused that these projects will have any meaningful impact on the County’s economy. Because they won’t. Local trades and contractors will get some work—and that is good—but most of the labour, expertise, design, construction and servicing will come from outside. And it will go, when the money dries up.

Nor will infrastructure have a meaningful impact on the tourism and visitor economy in Prince Edward County. Spending $25 million on County Road 49 won’t attract one additional Quebec visitor. It’s simply not the way visitors think. They want to travel slowly. To look out their windows and gaze across the bay. To spot the ferry in the distance.

Nor will the lineups into Sandbanks Provincial Park, one weekend last summer when they had to turn people away, discourage visitors to the County. More likely the opposite is true. When we are denied access to something because it is popular—it propels us to want it more, not less.

Same thing applies to parking in Picton and Wellington. Trouble finding a place to park is a sign of a prosperous urban core—not to a curse to be broken.

By all means let’s fix our broken infrastructure. But let’s be smarter about how we do it. Let us better understand why it needs to be done. Let us understand what it will do and what it won’t. Let’s not begin the conversation by confusing it with the County economy. For the two have very little to do with each other.

In the next weeks and months, we will talk more about the local economy—the threats, challenges and opportunities. And we will talk about real things we can do to improve the prospects for all County residents— and help pay for the things we need. Like infrastructure.

We will do our best not to confuse the two.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca