Dear Editor:
For those of you who attended the July 4, 2018 Whitewater Council meeting there was an interesting discussion about the feral cat issue in Cobden. Unfortunately most of those who attended didn’t stay for one of the main issues that will affect Cobden residents for the next thirty years.
Whitewater Council passed a motion later in that meeting to hire a contractor to build the new Cobden effluent treatment plant at a cost $11,173,255.69. Add to that the cost of the engineering consultant at $883,853.37 it comes to a total cost of $12,057,109.06. This of course does not include the cost of sealing up the sanitary sewer system to reduce leakage into the sanitary sewer. By time this project is complete Cobden residents can expect the total cost to be close to $13 million.
This should be no surprise to anyone. Here’s a bit of history as to how you got to this point.
On or about December 2015 the engineering consultant gave a Class C estimate of the effluent plant to Whitewater Region council of about $9.4 million. A Class C estimate has a range of +/- 25% which means the consultant expected the total cost they estimated would be in the range of about $7 million to about $11.8 million.
Last fall, since the estimated cost of the effluent treatment plant made no sense, Gary Youghusband and myself escorted two members of Whitewater Region staff as well as members from the engineering consultant to see a plant of similar size and technology in Port Carling ON that was built about four years ago. That plant cost over $13 million. Neither the engineering consultant nor Whitewater Region staff seemed to grasp the fact that the budget for the Cobden plant of $9.4 million was not realistic and the plant cost will be closer to $13 million.
Even as late as April 18, 2018 in a memo from J. Collins, manager of physical services, of Whitewater Region it was stated that the “New Estimated Project Cost “ would be $9,883,356.41.
The bids for the new plant were received and opened in a public meeting on June 22, 2018. The lowest bid was $10,980,000.00 plus HST. of $193,255.69 for a total of $11,173,255.69.
In a memo to council on July 4, 2018 J. Collins stated that because of the new expected cost of the plant of over $12 million the difference of $5,784,155.06 , that the residents of Cobden will need to pay in excess of the grants, can be borrowed at an estimated rate of 3.5% per annum over a term of 30 years. This means that, if approved, the residents of Cobden will be paying over $9.3 million over that 30 year term. Of course this does not include the cost of sealing up the leakage into the sanitary sewer system.
If as stated by councillor Olmstead that by this time next year there will be 75 additional homes in Cobden that will help to alleviate the financial burden. According to the Environmental Status Report issued by Jp2g in February 2017:” Cobden expects an additional 300 persons to the current population of 1000 by 2036.”
The good news is that this new effluent treatment plant should all but eliminate bypasses of raw sewage into Muskrat Lake and should reduce the total phosphorus going into the lake from about 90kg./ year to about 20 kg./ year.
It’s a start but there’s a long way to go.
Donald W. Deer ,P.Eng.
Whitewater Region
