Water woes

Engaged waterworks customers fill Bloomfield Town Hall

Asteady stream of waterworks ratepayers filed through the front doors of Bloomfield Town Hall last Thursday evening as the County hosted a Regional Water Supply open house. Attendees were able to browse around 30 information boards that outlined preferred options for the future of the County’s six different water systems.

One solution the County is looking at is to eventually build a new water plant in Wellington and run a 20-kilometre long pipe along the Millennium Trail to deliver water from Lake Ontario to Bloomfield and Picton. According to staff, Lake Ontario holds the freshest and cleanest water, which is easier to treat than the water currently pulled from Picton Bay that supplies Picton and Bloomfield.

On hand to answer questions were CAO Marcia Wallace, Director of Development Services Peter Moyer, Manger of Engineering David MacPherson and Project Manager Garrett Osborne. Mayor Steve Ferguson, and councillors Chris Braney, John Hirsch, Sam Grosso, Brad Nieman, Janice Maynard, Phil St-Jean and Corey Engelsdorfer were also in attendance.

According to Wellington resident Richard Currie, the format of the meeting left much to be desired. “Even in the early stages of a project, if Shire Hall is looking to properly inform the community of their plans and is genuinely seeking input, a panel of the appropriate individuals should make verbal presentations to the residents of the County and allow folks the opportunity to ask the questions that are most important to them and share their concerns as a group,” said Currie. “Ideally, this discussion would be backed up by a PowerPoint presentation supplying a visual interpretation of the supporting data.”

A contingent from Carla Court in Wellington were in attendance. Their properties back onto the treatment plant lands, and the group is worried about the possible loss of green space. “We are here with our poster showing we don’t have to totally destroy the green space beside Wellington’s water treatment plant if and when the waterworks system is expanded,” explained Wendy Matthews.

Currently, the plan is to reduce the 60-metre wide stretch of open space to the east of the water treatment plant to a mere 15-metre pathway between a regional treatment plant and nearby homes.

“We are very alarmed that this large green space is going to disappear forever when other options have not been fully explored,” added Matthews, who explained the group believes there is at least one other option—to reuse the space available when the existing plant is decommissioned and demolished and build the regional plant there.

“Our Secondary Plan got it right when it recognized park and open space lands as valuable resources that define our community and identity of Wellington. Council must ensure that maintaining valuable green space is one of the priority considerations when designing any new plants,” she said.

There will be another meeting held on Thursday, August 31 at 6 p.m. at the Wellington and District Community Centre at 111 Belleville Street. Additionally, a meeting to discuss the Wellington trunk main will be held on Thursday, September 7 from 6 to 8 p.m, also at the Wellington and District Community Centre.

One board that garnered much attention was the future buildout population numbers.