Council wants clearer information on capital projects and costs
Isabel Mosseler
Tribune
After two lengthy meetings to discuss the 2025 Water & Waste Water budget, West Nipissing council settled on a final increase of 5.6% or $367,248, which amounts to approximately $137 per month for water and sewer users. A total budget of $6.5 million was requested for 2025, with human resource costs going up by $162,000.
At the first meeting on December 17, CAO Jay Barbeau presented the case for the increase. “Water, wastewater, that budget is a separate user fee, and it’s been separated as a user fee by legislation for the past 23 years, and the user fees have been harmonized, meaning that they were the same user fees in all areas in West Nipissing. They used to be separate and distinct, and that was changed in my first year here, because of the massive pressure that would be placed on any one area, given the capital investment necessary to maintain them,” he explained.
The department is responsible for treating, supplying, and delivering safe water, using two sources: Sturgeon Falls, Springer and Cache Bay draw water from the Sturgeon River, and Verner from the Veuve River, operating two separate facilities (Verner is operated by OCWA – Ontario Clean Water Agency). Wastewater also has two separate facilities, a treatment plant in Sturgeon Falls and a lagoon in Verner, as well as a system treating 40 households in Field.
“This budget is not like the municipal budget (…) There are requirements to maintain the health and safety of our residents, and to abide by very stringent legislation to ensure that the public is protected both in the consumption of drinking water and in the treatment of wastewater.” Barbeau added that this department is very capital-intensive, with an aging infrastructure where breaks in watermains do occur. The cost of chemicals also increased significantly. “This Council, as you know, is liable (…) for decisions that would cause perhaps a lapse in the system. This is what we’re recommending to you so that doesn’t happen,” warned the CAO.
Total operating expenditures are $4.65M, including a transfer-to-reserve request of $1.35M. “Council, future Council, should be seriously looking at the continuous increase of these reserves to maintain status quo and, perhaps by some miracle, catch up with their infrastructure deficit, and the deficit in this area is quite large. (…) Payments on loans, we still have large loans, but they’re going down,” Barbeau advised.
Water and Waste Water Director Peter Ming was on hand to answer questions pertaining to the increase. “In 2024, it was under capital that we rented a vacuum truck for four months to be utilized. If we don’t have a vacuum truck, we’re reliant on contractors and for emergencies, most of the time, to do sewage cleaning of mains and things of that nature. With us renting the vacuum truck, we now have access to it continuously, and so we can undertake a lot more preventive maintenance work (…) We had accomplished a lot this year, and so we had requested to rent it for an additional two more months, from April to September.” An $80K increase in processing materials was attributed by Ming to additional chemicals in Verner. “We had run trials in Verner to help reduce manganese precipitation. And so there’s some increases for those specialty chemicals that we would like to start using.”
Director of Infrastructure Liz Henning explained that the wastewater treatment plant needs a digester roof at approximately $1.2 million and the generator for the water treatment plant is obsolete and will cost $900K to replace. They also want to change the plant and generator heating from electric to gas down the road for potential savings. In Verner, it’s recommended to get a replacement tank and tower, projected at $6M for the size they are looking at, sometime in the future. The existing tank, meanwhile, needs maintenance work, $280K of restoration on the existing tank and tower. “This existing tank is undersized.” The larger projected tank would serve a population of 2,000.
Coun. Kris Rivard raised the question of $450,000 set aside in 2024 for the water treatment plant generator, asking where the money was if it wasn’t spent. Ensuing questions arose, with Coun. Fern Pellerin commenting “It’s hard to follow the money”. Consequently, further discussions were deferred to January 7, when Treasurer Alisa Craddock would be present to explain.
On January 7, Craddock explained the financials to council, noting the difference between a dedicated reserve and the general reserve with an additional document. “What you had in the package was the general reserve for water and sewer (…) much like the municipality’s overall general reserve. Additionally, there are dedicated reserves that go along with water and wastewater. (…) All of the projects that are in this list of infrastructure can be achieved with the funds that are available, and it will deplete the balances to almost nothing, but we do have the reserves available for that. I understand there was some question about some of the things that had been projected, had been on project lists in prior years (…) The Verner water tower had been on a prior year. The generator had been on a prior year (…) The money for the generator that didn’t get spent in 2024 sits in that ending reserve balance, and then Mr. Ming has put the full $900K back into the expectation in 2025 (…). The unspent money just sits in the ending balance for reserve.”
