Councillors in Wellington North want to see residents get connected – to their storm sewers.
As part of Wellington North council’s works committee report, Works Superintendent Gary Williamson said the issue was recently discussed at the water and sewer committee meeting.
Williamson stated the township’s municipal standards require storm water services to be installed to the property line in all new developments and be installed when the town does street reconstruction.
However, Wellington North does not have a bylaw making it mandatory for all new developments to connect their pumps to those services.
He also considered incurring the cost to install storm services to the property lines of existing homes without requiring connections of sump pumps “a waste of money [unless they are used].”
Currently, in some cases, the township is extending storm sewer services to properties which might never connect on. However, if a lot is redeveloped, he believes connections should be required.
There are still infilling lots, and he said if new development happens, the owner should be required to hook sump pumps to the storm sewers as well.
The works committee agreed that a bylaw is needed to require all new developments to connect when storm sewers are available. The committee needs more time to discuss how to deal with homes on streets being reconstructed.
Williamson said to consider incentives to convince people to connect sump pumps to the storm sewers.
Council’s resolution said sump pumps of all new residential developments must be connected to storm sewers in accordance to municipal standards, as recommended by Wellington North’s works committee and water and sewer committee.
