Another summer

A few weeks ago, The Times presented Jordan Yarrow’s story. He owns a building lot in Wellington but can’t build a house on it. He would like to build a house, but Shire Hall won’t let him. It has committed the remaining waterworks capacity in the village’s waterworks to a single developer who owns the land north of the Millennium Trail.

As another summer approaches, the fourth since the deal with the developer was inked, there is little sign the landowner intends to use this capacity in any recognizable time frame. The village is frozen in time. It seems more likely that the trunk lines and a pumping station— currently being built for this developer— will be up and running before a house emerges from the fields north of the Trail.

The upshot is that Jordan Yarrow and several other villagers are stuck with dead lots. Stuck with empty building parcels that could be used to attract families. To grow.

But nothing can happen until the developer decides it is in its interest to build.

Something has to give. It is not good enough merely to shrug our shoulders and acknowledge that mistakes were made.

By now, it must be clear, even in Picton, that the idea of spending $300 million to pump Wellington water to the town is dead. Adding a $50,000 debt burden upon every County home with a water bill was always crazy risky. The growth premise was a fantasy—now just obviously so. The predicted population boom didn’t happen. And may never happen. The return was never worth the risk.

Meanwhile, a 2014 report found that a new intake and water plant in Picton was the ‘preferred’ way to expand the town’s water capacity for growth (See Experts May 7, The Times). There was, it seems, already a better way forward.

Last year’s recommendation of a regional water plant and 20-kilometre water pipeline was premised on the notion that Picton, Wellington and Bloomfield were about to blossom from 8,044 to 47,500 residents—a ludicrous expectation of growth in a community that has for a century and a half never seen its population stray far from 25,000 souls. It wasn’t the engineering firm’s fault—it was given bad information. Unverified, unvalidated and ahistoric input. Garbage in. Garbage out.

It is time to reassess Wellington waterworks. The 2020 plans have been discarded. The 2025 plan has been debunked.

It’s time to determine the true capacity of the existing plants. What is the cost of incremental expansion? How can the plant be expanded to add a few hundred homes at a time? What are the realistic alternatives to a sprawling, overbuilt, and eye-wateringly expensive mega water plant in Wellington?

It is long past time that Shire Hall began to explore more prudent and more manageable ways forward.

Jordan Yarrow wants to build a house in Wellington. Rather than continuing to block him, it is time for the municipality to figure out how to say yes. Not just for Mr. Yarrow, but also for everyone who hopes to bring life to a dead lot in this village.

It includes Sterling Homes.

The builder has plans to build 200 homes in Wellington. These are infill homes north of the Legion, south of the Millennium Trail, on both sides of Cleminson Street. Sterling intends to build mostly townhomes, plus a smaller number of single-detached homes. All are easily walkable to the village core. The selling prices will be more attractive to first-time buyers and folks looking to retire to a smaller home. The builder doesn’t need additional infrastructure. (See story here).

But Sterling is jammed up the same way Jordan Yarrow is—by waterworks capacity. It doesn’t have to be this way.

According to the builder, if it were given the green light this month, Sterling would be marketing new homes in Wellington by the fall.

“We would be ready to start phase one next year,” said Paul Mondell, a principal at Sterling Homes.

Shire Hall will have to decide, this year, next year or the one after that, that the current state is intolerable. Unworkable. Shire Hall has put this community in this position. It must now find a way out.

Four years have gone by. Wasted. Will we wait ten, 20 or 30 years before taking back the waterworks capacity we paid for?

How many summers will go by before we build a new home in Wellington?

rick@wellingtontimes.ca