A committee, setup to evaluate the recent study done about Wallaceburg’s drinking water, has yet to meet.
Kris Lee, a member of the Wallaceburg Advisory Team for a Cleaner Habitat (WATCH) group, said she has not heard from anyone regarding the evaluation committee since the last public meeting held by the Chstham-Kent Public Utilities Commission back in June.
“I’m sort of concerned,” Lee said. “I haven’t heard anything from them and they are suppose to have criteria that we are suppose to use and all this. I haven’t seen any criteria, I haven’t heard anything about where it’s going. So I am just kind of concerned about what is happening with that.”
Stantec Consulting was hired by the Chatham-Kent PUC to conduct an environmental assessment of the future of Wallaceburg’s water. Out of the four potential options, which includes rehabilitating the current Wallaceburg Water Treatment Plant, Stantec’s “preferred alternative” is to connect to the Chatham water supply, which gets its water from Lake Erie.
Tom Kissner, general manager of the Chatham-Kent PUC, told the Sydenham Current at the June meeting that no final decision would be made until the evaluation committee is formed and analyzes the options from the environmental assessment.
Kissner said the committee, which had not been finalized, would include Coun. Jeff Wesley, Coun. Carmen McGregor, a member of the Wallaceburg BIA, other members of the community, and Lee, from WATCH.
Kissner said in June that he expected the issue to be brought forward to the PUC in September or October.
“I would have expected to hear from them right after our meeting,” Lee said. “As far as the committee is concerned, it is important that we do have a balanced committee so obviously, I think you have to remember that everybody is going to go into that committee with certain biases. The Municipality is going to have certain biases, we know that. That’s why we need a balance. From one spectrum, to the other.”
Lee said the committee will have no legal clout.
“At the end of the day they said, and made it very clear, it’s the chair of the water commission that is going to make the decision, which is Randy Hope. At the end of the day is it the PUC and Randy Hope that is going to have to make that decision.”
Lee said WATCH as a group is not in favour of connecting to a new Chatham pipeline.
“We feel the water in Wallaceburg is excellent quality,” she said. “The spills have gone down in terms of the industry upstream. The only thing that we need right now is something more definitive from the industry to know exactly what measures they have in place to prevent the spills.”
Lee said she is going to have to be convinced that connecting to Chatham is a better option.
“The way that I understand this committee works is that there is going to be set criteria,” she said. “So I have to follow that criteria and base the decision on the criteria, not what you think. So how I feel is going to be irrelevant if I follow the criteria.”
Lee added: “Let’s say hypothetically that one of the criteria is that it has to be the cheapest way in the next 70 years. If that is a criteria, you have to pick the cheapest one for the next 70 years than yes, it’s going to be Chatham water because that is, according to them, the cheapest. So it depends on how they word the criteria. So regardless of what I think or what WATCH feels, I think this committee is going to be looking at it from a very pragmatic point of view.”
We’ll provide more information on this story when it becomes available.
