Not adding up

It doesn’t work. It will be over a century and a half before existing water users are paid back for the biggest infrastructure spending ever undertaken in this community. The project size and costs are grossly oversized for the rate of population growth expected by Shire Hall’s experts. It bears repeating: existing water customers in Prince Edward County will have to wait more than 150 years for developers to pay back the money Shire Hall is spending on developers’ infrastructure.

For whom—beyond the developers— does this make sense? These aren’t my numbers. Shire Hall consultants, Watson and Associates, insisted last week at an Audit Committee meeting that the County’s population will grow by 1.1 per cent over the next 20 years (they don’t make predictions beyond that—which should be a warning sign inside Shire Hall and beyond).

Committee members poked and prodded at the numbers, but the consultant was adamant. Population would rise from about nothing currently to 1.1 per cent when averaged over 20 years, according to Jamie Cook, a managing director at Watson.

Cook acknowledged, however, that given the age of the County’s population and the demographic likely to choose to live here, even this growth was likely unsustainable. The sheer age of those who reside here and those who wish to do so would tend to pull the growth curve downward, according to the demographer. More folks moving on than moving in.

But here is the thing. Even using Watson’s growth scenario, it will be 171 years before Wellington’s population catapults from 2,248 souls to 14,500. This is the proposed size of the water plant Council has on the table and about to be approved on August 27.

Similarly, it will take Picton 158 years to blossom into 32,500 people. It is ludicrous. It is madness. Yet, here we are.

Why are we building waterworks capacity for 15 decades from now? County engineers say they plan for 20 years. For good reason. Everything changes. Technology. Processes. Materials. Populations change. Age. Family composition. Persons per home.

Yet, Shire Hall is so eager to push the button on hundreds of millions of dollars for plants and pipes that it refuses to reconsider its assumptions. (See story Page 4). For whom?

Worse, it puts a lie to the claim that growth will pay for this infrastructure. It won’t. It can’t. Accumulating interest charges will surely erase any incremental development charges Shire Hall manages to extract from developers over this timescale.

It is a sweetheart deal for them. Upfront development charges agreements have proven to be worthless. Developers have already demonstrated they will pay their share—if, and only if, they are sure they can sell homes. Not even a penny or a moment sooner.

According to Watson’s projected growth rate, it will take more than a century before developers make their final payments. That leaves water customers paying down this debt. The interest alone will top more than $182 million. What reasonable person agrees to this? How have we gotten so far down this ruinous path?

Every water customer in Prince Edward County will pay for this mistake for the rest of their lives—or until they move away. The County waterworks fiasco will be a case study one day—a cautionary tale of weak and indifferent governance.

What are the alternatives? If we agree that Watson’s high—but defensible—growth estimates should be the basis for our planning (after all, what else is there?), and if we agree with County engineers that we should be planning for 20 years, the picture looks very different.

In Wellington, it means adding 648 people to the village. According to Shire Hall’s calculations, the system already has more than enough water and wastewater capacity to accommodate this growth. Just maintain the existing system.

In Picton, 1.1 per cent growth means adding about 1,658 new folks. Senior leadership has said that system has sufficient water and wastewater capacity to accommodate about 400 new homes at Base 31, which could accommodate about 800 new folks—or about ten years of capacity. That gives us time to develop a plan that costs less than $300 million.

Watson predicts Picton and Wellington’s combined population will grow by 2,300 folks (and then start to decline).

So why is Shire Hall building waterworks for 25,000 new arrivals? There is no fundamental, logical or expert basis for this scale of waterworks expenditure. There just isn’t. There is no foundation for this magnitude of spending.

It is, however, magnificent good fortune for developers— who will see their land values rise many times as water comes to their doorstep.

So the question has to be asked: Who is Shire Hall working for?

It is madness. Council must stop. Before any more money is wasted.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca