Empty words

Six hundred residents filled the hall at the Wellington community centre in August 2024. Most had come out to urge Council to pause plans to vastly expand waterworks infrastructure in the village and beyond to Picton.

“Population growth was vastly overstated,” they said. “The municipality had no experience managing a project to this scale.” “All the risk was on the backs of water rate payers.” “The result would be rapidly escalating water costs—already among the highest in the nation.” “Only developers would benefit from the unprecedented scale of spending,” they said.

Council pushed ahead anyway, ignoring residents and siding instead with the developers arrayed around the room. A few months earlier, Council had given staff the green light to contract for water and wastewater trunklines under the Millennium Trail.

“We have no option,” insisted John Hirsch, councillor for South Marysburgh, on the January night this wrecking ball was set in motion. Other councillors angrily denounced residents who had come to urge Council, once again, to pause.

But pausing would send a bad signal to developers, warned Mayor Ferguson, echoing councillors Phil St-Jean and John Hirsch. If Council didn’t proceed as the developer wanted, growth wouldn’t happen, development charges wouldn’t be generated, and the developer would sue the County—because you know, it was really eager to build homes in Wellington.

So, how are we doing two and a half years later?

That trunkline project is already a year overdue, with no end in sight. Bedrock pounding echoing through the village has become part of daily life. Meanwhile, the estimate of $12 million has catapulted to more than $31 million so far—and again with no end in sight. And despite massive waterworks spending and debt piling up in your name, new homebuilding in Prince Edward County has dried up and blown away. The developer’s land remains fallow. Crops are sprouting where homes were meant to be built.

The developer is the only beneficiary. Its land is worth much more with shiny new water service running the length of its property. Along the way, Shire Hall’s then chief administrative officer (CAO) traded all the remaining capacity in the village’s wastewater treatment plant to the developer for $12 million.

In so doing, the CAO gave the developer a lock on any new homebuilding in the village. The then-CAO won awards for this innovation. Since then, not a single home has been built in the village. Nor will any be built until this developer decides to do so—on its timetable. Given current market conditions, it may be a long, long time.

This week, however, Shire Hall is proposing to make this fiasco infinitely worse. On Thursday, Council will be asked to revive the left-for-dead Regional Water Plan.

It has already blown $50 million into this deep, dark hole, adding millions of dollars in interest payments onto water users’ bills. Tomorrow, they will consider spending at least $215 million more to bring water to Picton. As we have seen before, $200 million will become $400 million in the blink of an eye.

For no good reason. There is no need for this additional capacity. Not today. Not for the foreseeable future.

No new homebuilding is occurring in Prince Edward County. There is an abundance of homes for sale in the County. The supply of homes for sale has never been higher. No developer is likely to start a new project against such market headwinds.

Furthermore, Canada’s population growth has declined for three straight quarters. A new municipal census is due next year. It may well show a shrinking of the County’s population rather than growth. Every signal suggests new homebuilding is in a long-term freeze.

Will Council heed the warnings this time?

In any other circumstance, such a bad outcome as the Wellington trunk project (see story page 2) might humble those responsible. In Shire Hall’s apology report, presented to Council on Tuesday, the authors attempted to explain away their failings as “unforeseen and uncontrollable.” It is pure and verifiable nonsense.

Average residents stood up at microphones three years ago to describe how this was likely to fail. And it did. They said the County’s history made the predicted wave of population growth unrealistic. It was. They said it was too risky. They said it would only benefit developers. They warned Council that it would blow up in their faces and that waterworks users would bear the cost.

It was all foreseen and should have been managed. It wasn’t. Now, water rate payers will pay for these mistakes for decades.

This week Council is on the precipice of quadrupling down—making a massively risky bet it has no business making.

Near the end of the meeting in 2024, Council promised the gathered residents that it would not take another step toward a Regional Water plan until it had produced a rock-solid project management plan, a fully funded financial plan and a thorough communications plan. It made a commitment to the room full of people. None of it has been done. It hasn’t even started.

Yet, here we are again.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca