Temperature rising

Water worries fill Wellington on the Lake Recreation Centre

It was Music in the Park night in Wellington last Tuesday. Nevertheless, more than 200 residents of Wellington on the Lake forewent the lovely summer musical interlude to pack a meeting hall to talk about water.
Specifically, they were there to share experiences and worries about their increasingly unmanageable water bills—they worry about bills continuing to escalate out of sight. This is because Shire Hall has committed to spending $100 million to expand Wellington’s waterworks system to accommodate unprecedented growth—growth, it predicts, will see the village population expand four times to 8,600 people.

As consumers of the user-pay water system, they do not understand how adding these costs and debt on their backs will improve their lot. Public meetings have shared engineering designs and justification, but have not answered essential questions about why? What will it do for me? Or calculate the risks if Shire Hall’s prediction of a population explosion doesn’t transpire. They fear they will be on the hook for debt incurred to fund growth that was never realistic.

Your correspondent was part of the panel discussion, along with Wellington council member Corey Engelsdorfer (publisher of this newspaper), and Dorothy Bothwell. Bothwell is a resident of the subdivision and a former council member in Grimsby, Ontario.

The conversation ranged from frustration to disappointment. Many residents shared a feeling of helplessness and resignation. Others, however, spoke of radical approaches to rationing water to control their water bill. A general theme emerged: that they had come to Wellington on the Lake to live their retirement years in a pleasant, affordable community. While the pleasant part remains intact, life is becoming harder to fund on a fixed income.

Many simply don’t believe new homebuilding on a meaningful scale is imminent, nor do they comprehend who, how, or where 927,393 square feet of new commercial development will be constructed. They are also increasingly aware that if none of this happens in the foreseeable future, water bill users in Prince Edward County are on the hook for the investment being made to accommodate it.

The group was united in calling on Shire Hall to press pause on new spending in Wellington. They have organized a letter-writing campaign and petitions to County Council, asking it to stop and reassess the plans, the premise, and the assumptions.

They were united, too, in demanding greater accountability and transparency regarding the decision-making on their behalf.

In response, Shire Hall has announced a Public Information Centre (PIC) on August 31 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Wellington Community Centre. It is billed as “an opportunity for the public to refamiliarize [themselves with] the findings of both the MSP [Wellington Master Servicing Plan] and the DC [Wellington area-rated Development Charges] Study.