Owners of property in the Maliview Sewer Local Service Area (MSLSA) are facing a massive 30-year bill to pay for a mandated wastewater treatment plant upgrade which is finally close to going out for tender.
On Wednesday, June 18 the MSLSA Commission of the Capital Regional District (CRD) passed a motion to increase the long-in-the-works project budget by $1,726,000, from the $2,260,000 that was estimated in 2020 for expected completion in 2022 to $3,986,000 now. The additional funds will come from $47,000 in capital on hand and proposed new debt of $1,679,000.
Schuyler Witman and Sharon Bywater are two Maliview area property owners who attended the meeting about the project.
“People were saying they’re considering selling their homes because they can’t afford these utility bills, which are already really high,” said Witman.
“We’re a working-class neighbourhood, and lo and behold, [at the meeting] people were raising their hands and saying, ‘I’m a plumber, I’m a construction worker,’ and me, personally, I’m a teacher.”
She was also critical of the short notice provided for the June 18 meeting, and its mid-afternoon Wednesday timing, since so many residents are workers.
Witman said she and her husband bought one of the least expensive Salt Spring houses they could find a few years ago and were shocked when they received their first quarterly MSLSA water/sewer bill.
MSLSA property owners already pay almost $2,000 per year for a fixed-use charge, an annual $56.77 parcel tax and a $1.75 per cubic metre water consumption charge, with water supplied from St. Mary Lake by the CRD’s Highland/Fernwood water system.
The CRD is unable to state the exact per property cost of borrowing the proposed $1,679,000, but “for analytical purposes only” estimate the impact will be a further $1,779.
“It’s a sad situation,” said Bywater, “because Maliview has always been a place where blue-collar folks could maybe buy a home or rent affordably, and our infrastructure costs have just grown and grown over the years.”
Bywater served on the MSLSA Commission for a time in the past, so knows the inherent challenges faced by the CRD and commission.
“A small number of [property owners] maintain a large, expensive piece of infrastructure,” she said, “and we’ve been caught in a breakdown-repair cycle.”
That has resulted in capital reserves being depleted so that the new upgrade project cost hits the approximately 100 property owners even harder.
CRD senior manager Dan Ovington said the older system does require emergency repairs and ongoing maintenance, which increases costs to users.
“The CRD has also been mandated by the Ministry of Environment to investigate the infiltration and inflow — or I&I — which will ultimately reduce the amount of ‘small fixes,’ and the I&I is included in the overall costs of the upgrade project.”
In late 2019 and early 2020, the CRD received notices from federal and provincial government environmental authorities that the Maliview wastewater plant was out of regulatory compliance when it comes to its effluent quality.
According to a CRD staff report, the CRD made operational changes to mitigate non-compliance events, and started on the path to upgrading the plant. In August 2022 the project was approved for $1.98 million in federal-provincial government infrastructure funding. At the time the CRD gave an estimated 18-month completion timeframe for the project and said only $271,000 more debt would need to be carried by ratepayers.
But various factors resulted in progress not being made as planned.
“Staff turnover, staff capacity and competing priorities have caused a delay,” said Ovington. “Despite this, staff have completed detailed designs, updated cost estimates and have purchased major equipment components that are already on Salt Spring Island.”
On the funding front, Ovington said CRD director Gary Holman has committed an additional $200,000 of Community Works (gas tax) funding to support the project, in addition to a previously committed amount of $343,620.
Ratepayer approval is required to authorize the borrowing, but must be forthcoming one way or another since the project has been mandated by the provincial and federal governments. The CRD is proposing a method that would need owners of 50 per cent of properties representing at least 50 per cent of net taxable value in the area to give borrowing approval. CRD materials state, “If the petition is not successful, an alternative approval process (AAP) will be initiated at further cost to the ratepayers,” should the AAP fail.
Ovington said the AAP would cost about $20,000 and a full referendum as much as $70,000 — all borne by the ratepayers.
Bywater said she would support the borrowing petition and that she and her husband can handle the increase somehow, even if it means deferring the taxes as seniors.
“We can make it work. It’s just a matter of how. But there are other people on the street who aren’t in that situation, and so that’s troubling.”
“If I had a message to send out to the government bodies,” she added, “it would be ‘is there any more money you can put onto this street?’ Because this is where your hospital employees are, this is where your teachers are, this is where your ferry workers are, this is where the gardeners are . . . all those people.”