Connecting Picton’s and Wellington’s water networks remains the current favoured option for plans to expand water service in Prince Edward County.
Prince Edward County held a public information session on Thursday, detailing the potential options for water service under the Regional Water Supply Servicing Master Plan.
County residents filled an exhibition hall at the Wellington Community Centre to see the current recommendations laid out, compared with other options that have been considered. Residents were able to examine a series of visual displays laying out various details of the plan, with municipal staff experts and consultants on hand to answer any questions that arose.
Prince Edward County is expected to see significant growth over the next 20 years, with the population in Picton expected to reach 32,600 compared to 5,796 today and Wellington to reach 14,500 over 2,248 today. The predicted population increase has led to plans to improve the water systems in order to accommodate the growing population.
Prince Edward County currently has six separate water systems, and the biggest changes are proposed for the Wellington and Picton systems, with a recommendation to connect the two via a trunk line, allowing the Wellington Water Plant to take over for the aging Picton Water Plant. The new line would run primarily along Millennium Trail. This recommendation also calls for a new water intake to be constructed at Wellington, collecting water from Lake Ontario, along with a new regional water treatment plant to be built on the site of the existing Wellington water treatment plant.
One of the factors involved in the recommendation to expand the Wellington water treatment is that the water is cleaner at the intakes on the Wellington system, resulting in higher water quality. Cost savings are another factor. Moving operations to a single plant, is expected to save $250,000 annually in operating costs.
Some alternatives were considered but are not currently recommended. Some of these alternative plans are retrofitting existing infrastructure on both the Picton and Wellington water systems. These options were considered, and found to have much higher operating and maintenance costs.
In order to keep the impact of the project as low as possible for existing customers, the plan includes recommendations to use development fees to cover 75% of the cost of construction to carry out the recommended plan.
Prince Edward County Mayor Steve Ferguson said that the information session has been a big success.
“People have been respectful and they’ve been open to conversation,” said Mayor Ferguson. “We certainly recognize that it’s complex, but we have to plan, we can’t bury our head in the sand and not plan for the future.”
Councillor Phil St-Jean said that municipal staff and consultants did an excellent job preparing the information session for the public.
“I think everybody is very inquisitive. They want they want to know the facts,” said Councillor St-Jean. “I’m not sensing a lot of the anger that we have seen at some of the other recent public information sessions or public meetings.”
None of the currently proposed plans have been locked in as the definitive path forward. The next step in the process is to compile all the public comments and create a master plan report.
