Reform
Waterworks commission
The County’s waterworks is broken. If it were a business, it would be in receivership— awaiting only the vultures to pick apart its desiccated carcass. Its debt would be junk, its remaining parts sold off at auction. For the next punter to take his shot.
Twice over the past decade, the County has been forced to stitch together a rescue plan because the waterworks utility couldn’t pay its bills, forced to pillage general taxpayer funds to bail it out. Like a payday loan. Just as sketchy. Just as likely to induce pain later on—once the hangover sets in.
Each new plan has led to massive, long-term increases in your waterworks bill. It is not at all clear that, this time—for the current plan is not yet complete—if it will work. Past experience suggests it won’t.
Municipal waterworks, of course, don’t go bankrupt—they just dig deeper into its consumers’ pockets. But unlike your hydro, telephone or gas bill, there is no public agency looking out for the consumer to ensure the waterworks utility is being run effectively, efficiently, fairly and to the benefit of the users.
No one, it seems, is looking out for waterworks consumers. The 3,800 customers of the County’s water system are on the hook for 100 per cent of every cost overrun. Of every bad deal and of every discarded rescue plan.
Worse, this utility is guided by folks with no interest in controlling costs, or incentive to run the business efficiently. Success is measured exclusively by the safety of the product and compliance to provincial standards.
These are good things, but not the only goals of a well-functioning utility. Affordability. Ability to pay. Efficiency. These are also important ambitions.
But sadly, the consumer is a bystander in the governance and management of the utility, for which they pay the entire bill.
Only seven of 16 council members are even waterworks utility consumers. Nine other representatives govern the business without any skin in the game. This simply doesn’t work. They haven’t had to endure the steep climb in rates over the past decade and a half.
It is a broken model.
One example: The Times reported, in 2009, how Belleville was gouging the County for bulk water. We were paying nearly three times more than the City of Belleville charges every other bulk water customer it serves. Strangers could pull up to the Belleville waterworks and fill a tanker at a third of the cost the County was paying for the same water. It was an obscene arrangement. It remains so.
But here is the thing: I would have bet money in 2009, that this rotten deal would have crumbled into dust, once it was thrust in to the stark light of day. I expected embarrassed officials to rush to rewrite a new deal. A fair deal. An arrangement that recognizes that we are interdependent neighbours. That we respect one another.
I would have lost that bet. Nine years later, nothing has changed. We still pay nearly threetimes Belleville’s bulk water rate. There have been some meetings. But nothing at all has come from it.
Why has nothing happened? Because it is not their money. When you pay for something, you look at things differently.
One more: Consecon and Carrying Place residents, just prior to amalgamation, had contracted for 10 years with Quinte West to supply its water. That deal was transferred to the County after amalgamation. But before the term of the original deal had elapsed, the County quietly and without talking to the affected users, ripped up the agreement. They did this solely to enable Shire Hall to charge these residents more, for the same water. They needed the money to fix the water tower, so they took it, with no consideration of these consumers, or the deal they had struck with Quinte West.
The County’s waterworks are riddled with such inequities, such divergent interests. Such plans gone awry. Do you remember the $10 million replacement to Picton’s sewage plant, built on a hillside overlooking the town, that ended up costing waterworks customers in excess of $35 million? The electricity costs alone of pumping sewage up and down that hill is so many times greater than first estimated. A lingering ulcer, without remedy.
It’s a complex business—six water systems, each one different from the other, and two vastly different wastewater systems. There are no common water sources— two are contracted supplies (from Belleville and Quinte West), three pipes extend into Lake Ontario, Picton Bay and Roblin Lake and there is a well at Peat’s Point.
Costs to manage this system have escalated rapidly and relentlessly over the last decade and a half. Worse, there is no indication that the eyewatering pace of rate increases will ease over the next decade.
There are simply too many moving parts for council to govern this business effectively. It is beyond the scope of municipal councillors. If we were building this utility new, no one would ever propose the current structure.
We’ve tried ad hoc committees. They’ve barely scratched the surface of this multifaceted business.
It requires a permanent commission, one that can take a long-term view of the utility—its goals, strategy, operations and performance—to start bending the arc in favour of the customer.
So, this year, let us establish a PEC waterworks utility commission—populated solely by folks who are consumers of the system. The County is fortunate to have a great many residents qualified and eager to sit on and govern such a utility. Folks with skin in the game.
How many rescue plans do we have to burn through before we acknowledge that what we are doing now, simply isn’t working?
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