Nope
No, Picton’s wastewater treatment capacity isn’t in crisis, nor is it an “ecological time bomb.” Such reckless and simply incorrect statements are unworthy of serious debate, let alone reporting and commentary in an otherwise respectable newspaper. It is bizarre and frankly disappointing to observe our friends trading in lazy handwringing and feverish warnings—breathlessly intoning the […]
A gaping hole
A reckoning is coming. We have too many expensive things and too many ambitions. It is a freight train that has been chugging toward Prince Edward County since amalgamation 27 years ago. It is near now. We can feel the heat of the engine. Council can no longer choose to ignore it. Lacking material reserve […]
Echoes
Must we experience every lesson? Must we feel searing pain and lasting scars before we know that some choices can be dangerous? Are there some things we can learn from others? From their experience? A couple of stories from across the province over the weekend. In Norfolk County last week, the council scrapped a plan […]
Looking forward
Road trips are great settings to sort out life’s big issues. They offer time to decompress. An opportunity to stare at a different horizon. To allow your playlist to present an uninterrupted soundtrack for the adventure and miles of road ahead. The best part of a road trip—in regards to relationship mending, the focus of […]
Dark places
We are cavefish. This strange creature lives mostly in dark caves and underground lakes where the ability to see offers no advantage. As a result, the cavefish have lost, through many generations, the ability to see. It is blind. Vestigial eyes are covered with scales. It can only exist in the dark. Your municipal Council […]
It matters to us
Heading east out of Swift Current, the TransCanada stretches forever. Nothing but sky and the tabletop carrying you homeward. The effect is numbing. Unrelenting flatness. Time slows. Brain chemistry changes. Then, from the swaying yellow fields of canola, a strange lake emerges. Stretching to the horizon. The sudden body of water is wide, still and […]
Principles first
A reader last week urged your correspondent to set aside criticisms of the municipality’s dangerous $300 million waterworks expansion plan for a week and instead offer some solutions. I’ve been writing about municipal waterworks and escalating water bills for 20 years (to the understandable weariness of some readers). When water rates surged 12 per cent […]
Make believe
The arithmetic doesn’t add up. The scale of the project is monstrous. No one at Shire has undertaken anything like this before. And, nearly all the risk they are taking will fall to residents (municipal water customers) who don’t need it, won’t use it and didn’t ask for it. But surely the most frightening bit […]
End times
That should be the end of it. The $300 million plan to take water out of Lake Ontario in Wellington and deliver it to Picton was always a pipe dream. Unprecedented in scale, cost and risk, the plan was never going to work. That much is clear now. Worse, it risked a massive financial failure […]
Promises
Things go wrong. Never quite as planned. A sweeping generalization for sure, but when it comes to the municipality building things—it’s bank. A rock-solid fact. Municipal projects take longer and cost more. Always. Right up until the moment the shovel hits the ground, estimates of time and money are shapeless, vaporous phantoms. Without texture, weight […]