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Decrepit pipes need replacing, council warned
The average Ottawa water bill will increase $138 a year by 2010, if city council follows a staff recommendation on fixing the city’s aging water and sewage systems.
In a report to council’s planning committee yesterday, Dixon Weir, director of water and wastewater services, said the systems need investment and the increases are needed just to keep them running well.
“It’s the cost of continuing to provide the highest-quality drinking water and sewage treatment,” he said. “It’s just the reality of the age of the infrastructure.”
The rate-increase request, which would start this year, will be debated by the planning committee in early March. Consideration by city council would follow later in the month.
The request is for nine-per-cent increases this year, next year and in 2010, which work out to 29.5 per cent over that period with compounding. The water and sewage bill for an average residence last year was $468, according to the city. By 2010, the rate increases would raise the bill to $606.
Water and sewage charges are not included in Ottawans’ property taxes, which are tentatively expected to rise up to 4.9 per cent this year. With the possible water and sewage charges added in, the total hike in city fees works out to six per cent for an average household.
Kanata North Councillor Marianne Wilkinson said that as in many other areas, including roads and public buildings, residents are now paying for years of neglect.
“There are a lot of infrastructure problems that need to be addressed now because for a long, long time there was nothing done,” she said. “If repairs had been done, we could have avoided some of this.”
Bay Councillor Alex Cullen said the rate increases may look big, but they are needed.
“None of this money goes to anything else but the water and sewer programs, and this is what it’s going to take to keep up with things we have to do,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”
If approved, the rate increases will raise the department’s budget from $213 million in 2007 to roughly $275 million in 2010.
Mr. Weir told committee members the bulk of the roughly $117 million in new revenue over three years would be spent replacing and upgrading pipes, pumps and filtration facilities, while only a small portion will go toward increasing costs to operate the system.
He said he and department staff think that by 2011 they will have caught up on enough repairs to lower the rate increase to five per cent per year for three years. By then, he said, most of the required repairs should be complete, and the rate can return to an inflation-level increase of roughly two per cent to cover increases in operating costs.
However, he said, these things won’t be known for sure until 2010, when a full review of the systems is done to determine whether more repairs are needed.
In his presentation, Mr. Weir said the city is not alone; almost all major municipalities in Ontario are embarking on major water and sewer infrastructure replacement and repair programs to deal with systems that were installed in the years following the Second World War and are now wearing out. The municipalities of Toronto, Peel, Hamilton, Durham and London have all approved water and sewer rate increases of between eight and 10 per cent for 2008.
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008