Resistance

The resistance will continue. It must. Many, including your correspondent, exhaled when council declined to endorse a $360 million waterworks infrastructure plan last month. A richer, deeper breath followed after outgoing mayor Steve Ferguson backed off his intention to invoke strong mayor powers to push it through. The plan would have impoverished the municipality, stuck water users with everhigher water bills while benefiting only a handful of developers.

A wooden stake in the heart of the plan should have ended it. Alas, the fight must continue. Such beasts tend to rise again.

While the elected folks—outgoing and maybe incoming—largely understand the message from voters, the bureaucrats—at least the folks who had been so looking forward to shiny new gear and once-in-a-career infrastructure building—aren’t as likely to allow their big-spending dreams to fall away so easily.

They will have something to say about what happens next. And perhaps a pliable new council upon which to nudge and prod.

They still have a few cards to play.

Faithful readers will remember Jordan Yarrow’s story. He owns a building lot on Belleville Street, just north of Main Street. After months navigating the planning department’s obstacle course, Jordan managed to leap through the final municipal hoop in May of 2025. It was then that he was told it might be another “20 or 30 years” before he would be permitted to build his home on this infill lot in Wellington. He stood agape before Council. Empty. There was nothing to be done.

Shire Hall has effectively shut down new homebuilding— all development, for that matter—in Wellington. No building is permitted until waterworks capacity is added. No new homes, no apartments, no secondary homes, no townhomes, no businesses may be built in the village. Not for market reasons—but because Shire Hall made a mistake.

The future growth of Wellington was traded to a developer for $12 million. Shire Hall, or at least a prior version of its leadership, made a bad deal—and now the village is stuck.

What was once an embarrassing and costly error, however, has lately become leverage for Shire Hall bureaucrats: Build a big regional water system, or Wellington will remain stuck. Forever.

These words aren’t spoken out loud, of course. Instead, the coercion is characterized as “Doing nothing isn’t an option.” “Growth is coming.” Such pressure is often expressed as urgent—that something bad may happen if money isn’t spent rapidly.

What council is unlikely to hear from inside its own house is that there are perfectly reasonable—many say preferable—ways to expand the water system than a monstrously oversized and expensive regional water facility.

According to the folks who built and operated the existing plant for decades, the facility was built to be expanded. The north wall can be removed and additional filtration trains added as needed. It was designed and constructed to accommodate growth. So let’s use it.

The best bit is that the province has committed $18.3 million to the water system—to enable new homebuilding. Given that no homes may be permitted in the village now, this is an easy argument for using these funds to expand the current water plant. Shire Hall bureaucrats must be encouraged to make this happen.

As for the wastewater plant, the federal government has committed $20 million to expand the existing modular plant or construct a new one. Council must, as one of its first orders of business, insist upon a third-party review to identify the most cost-efficient way forward. A real review—not the half-hearted none-of-the-12-consulting-firms chose- to-bid-on-the-review nonsense that doomed the last external review.

As for Picton, both systems—water and wastewater— have plenty of capacity. And the water is safe. It always has been safe. And when asked a direct question, Shire Hall says the same thing.

Currently, however, it isn’t in the waterworks operator’s interest to reassure residents. Not until the regional water plan is well and truly dead.

The simple truth is that Shire Hall’s interests aren’t aligned with the users and funders of the system. It is easy to lobby for big, expensive infrastructure when you aren’t paying the bills. It is easy to raise the stakes by tightening the chokepoints and stoking fear when it’s not your money.

It is, however, far beyond the proper bounds of managing a municipal water system.

The resistance must continue.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca