Christian Gammon-Roy
Tribune
Residents of Verner may finally see a light at the end of the tunnel after years of dealing with tap water issues. On January 22, the municipality of West Nipissing announced that the provincial government had approved up to $18,158,750 in funding from the Health and Safety Water Stream, under the Municipal Housing Infrastructure Program, towards their Verner water infrastructure project. The project cost has ballooned over the past few years, and is now estimated at approximately $24 million. In a release, town officials say they will “continue to pursue additional funding opportunities.”
The project includes the construction of a new water main from Cache Bay to Verner and converting Verner’s existing treatment plant into a pumping station. According to Elizabeth Henning, Director of Infrastructure, the existing Verner water treatment plant is expected to reach its life expectancy by 2035. Detailed design work for the new water infrastructure is already underway. Construction is planned to begin in June 2027, with completion required by March 31, 2029, in accordance with funding requirements.
The funding announcement for the Verner project comes at the heels of an additional $700 million investment announced by the provincial government on January 16, topping up the $175 million announced in January 2025 for the Health and Safety Water Stream. “When they opened that up, they must have had a lot of applications come in,” suspects West Nipissing Mayor Kathleen Thorne Rochon, who has been asking for health and safety funding from the provincial government for many years.
She partly credits the delegations to ROMA and AMO conferences, where she mentions that “West Nipissing was probably only one out of 5 to 10 municipalities who came in and identified needs for a water infrastructure fund that wasn’t tied to housing.” The mayor adds that she was relieved to see the government create the program to address those needs, and then top up the funding to boot.
