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A plan to bring Ottawa tap water to the Township of Russell cleared the city’s planning committee yesterday despite concern it will encourage urban sprawl.
By a vote of seven to three, councillors on the committee endorsed an agreement that will see a 27-kilometre water pipe constructed to serve the township, which doesn’t have a suitable water source of its own.
City council will consider the committee’s recommendation today.
Under the agreement, the township will be responsible for the construction and maintenance of a $20-million pipe connecting the area to Ottawa’s municipal water supply.
The township will pay the same rate for water as residents of the city do.
Officials are hoping the pipe will be functioning by spring 2009, and the agreement is for 30 years.
The township, which currently operates on well water, needs the connection because the Ontario Ministry of the Environment found risks to water quality resulting from past and current land uses surrounding the township’s wells, in particular from farming.
The township could have constructed a water purification plant, estimated to cost $60 million to $80 million, but the pipe to Ottawa is much more cost effective, especially because the municipality has secured about $9 million in grants from the provincial and federal governments for the project.
“This is the best option for the township,” Clarke Bellinger, project manager for Russell, said after the committee vote.
“It’s a very important project for the township.”
All members of the committee agreed with that assessment yesterday, but three dissenting councillors were concerned.
Capital Councillor Clive Doucet said the pipe goes against city policies aimed at containing urban sprawl.
He pointed out that the city won’t lay water pipes in several rural areas within its own boundaries because doing so would promote sprawl.
He said by extending a water line through these areas and out even further is counterproductive.
“It seems to me that if we are going to have a financially sustainable city, we need to have a city with less sprawl, and driving a 30-kilometre pipe through Russell Township is a step in the wrong direction,” he said.
However, Knoxdale-Merivale Councillor Gord Hunter summed up the majority’s thoughts on the issue when he said the township is in a bind, it’s a health and safety issue for people in the area, and city taxpayers won’t lose in any way under the deal.
“Let’s get on with it,” he said. “We’re doing a good thing. We’re helping our neighbours.”
© The Ottawa Citizen 2007