Dear Editor:
I will attempt over these next few weeks to review over 20 years of the Town of Erin wastewater proposals.
It really has never been a proposal, it has been an idea that has never been changed at all since the first report tying the new development into the existing homes.
This has been a mistake that has driven this ill-conceived agenda since day one.
The only true vote on this matter was done by then Reeve Terry Mundell just before the full amalgamation of the small village of Erin into the much larger Town of Erin. In that vote, the one where only the concerned homeowner that would be affected by this project and the cost were allowed to vote, the entire proposal was defeated by a massive margin.
Since that first vote the village became the much larger town and this issue has been kept alive for over 20 years. The two issues are completely separate and should have been separated years ago. Leave the people with existing septic systems alone, and get on with new development. Had this been done all the development would have long been done and all businesses in Erin would have thrived.
I moved here in May of 1987. I was on the Rails to Trails team in fundraising after being asked to lead this group by Mundell in 1996.
It was during these years of 1996 to 2000 that the original engineering plan was proposed tying these two separate issues together. Since the provincial and federal governments were giving away large sums of money in 1998 and 1999 for the new millennium, as they did for Centre 2000, and we in Erin were marked for development, well let the applications begin. This is when the nightmare was created. That is the problem in a nutshell; from that first thought the dye had been cast.
The expanded and amalgamated town needed development to expand government income and expenditures. It was the only way we will ever survive, all mayors have screamed from that day forward. What a lie.
The developers have all proposed that they could do their own mini systems from day one. Let me give you one example here. When Centre 2000 was built, including the new high school, the septic system was oversized to handle about 500 new homes proposed to be built along Dundas Street where the old Armstrong farm was and the developers had bought. That system is so little used they have had to reconfigure it and close off about 80% of it’s original capacity. Stay tuned folks, for part two of this ongoing saga.
Keith Hayward,
Erin