It seems the province is making the rules but leaving municipalities to foot the bill.
Councillor Susan Fielding said that recently “Mayor Dennis Lever, our chief building official Robert Kelly and myself attended a webinar at the township office.”
It was developed by the Ministry of the Environment for source water protection compliance issues and plans.
“Unfortunately there really wasn’t much talk other than to say a lot of it would be a municipal responsibility. There wasn’t much talk about funding.”
Fielding said there was a lot of discussion about municipalities needing compliance officers. “I think the mayor shares my concerns that this is going to be a very expensive exercise for municipalities.”
Fielding is on Hamilton-Halton source Water protection group and has been asking who will pay.
“We seem to be getting a lot of push back from MOE.”
She said the final reports are anticipated to be in by the middle of this year. She added it seems the ministry is very discouraging of any economic impact information going into that report.
“I have a lot of grave concerns. There has been no offer of funding from the MOE to implement any of these programs, and no solid estimates of what it will cost municipalities.”
While Fielding believes proposals are “doable,” she is worried how people will be affected and how little information is available for the public and how people will be affected. “I still have a number of concerns about this.”
To Fielding, the webinar provided little in the way of new information.
But Lever said there was a significant amount of new information for him.
He explained he had been less involved than Fielding on the issue.
“What surprised me, is how much [the MOE] avoided discussing costs, and instead referred to the potential of cost recovery locally.”
To him, that meant the municipality could attach permit fees to recover some implementation costs.
“But there is no way we could implement permit fees to cover the costs of personnel, enforcement officers and inspectors.”
Lever believes the webinar was an eye-opener for Kelly as well.
Lever said, “This is going to be a difficult program to implement, and it is going to be a real challenge for municipalities to forge ahead with – without a lot of support from the province financially.”
While the province is offering training programs, Lever said “two training programs a year – one in the spring and one in the fall – isn’t going to be nearly adequate to get the staffing in place we will need to run this in the next couple of years.”
Fielding said the Halton Region chief administrative officer agreed the financial aspect is a concern for all municipalities.
She considers it a conundrum. “It seems almost unconscionable that the ministry is pushing all this forward and there is no plan to pay for it.”
She added, “I can see the writing on the wall where it will come down to the municipalities having to pay for this.”
Fielding said as a municipal councillor and having been involved in the budget process “It seems unfathomable to set up a program and have no idea how its going to be paid for.”
She added Halton’s request for an extension sent back in January, has yet to be acknowledged by the ministry.
“Its very disappointing.”
