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January
21 , 2003
WATERMAIN BREAK ILLUSTRATES DISTORTED PRIORITIES OF HAMILTON
CITY COUNCIL
This
morning's disastrous watermain break at Locke and Herkimer
Streets in Hamilton once again exposes the perilous state
of Hamilton's existing infrastructure and underlines the
wisdom of doing timely maintenance, repair and rehabilitation.
The cost, including the human suffering, will clearly be
immense.
Over
the past two years, Hamiltonians have been told that 23%
of our water and sewer pipes are more than 75 years old
and therefore beyond their useful life expectancy. Water
and sewer rates have been raised with the intention of resolving
this problem. But while our old pipes rot and burst, substantial
monies continue to be allocated by City Council for new
pipes to subsidize new development.
This
is illustrated on page 31 of the 2003 Water and Wastewater
Budget where we read: "Also of note, there is $8.1
million budgeted for the airport watermain looping project
in 2003, $5 million of which will be funded by money set
aside from the Hamilton Future Fund, and $3.1 million which
will be funded from other internal sources." None of
the money for this project is coming from development charges.
The
same page reveals plans to spend $55 million over the next
ten years for "airport infrastructure development".
It also notes that "This is currently intended to be
fully funded from development charges, however the development
charge reserves currently cannot support this. The expected
shortfall will be made up through revised development charges,
front-ending arrangements, debenture issues and/or other
sources of financing." In other words we will continue
to subsidize local developers.
This
is the type of thinking that got us into this mess. It’s
not the type that will get us out.
The
warnings about the state of our infrastructure are long-standing.
Concern about the state of the City's infrastructure, especially
its pipes, was formally conveyed by staff to the former
Regional Council as early as December 1996 when staff wrote:
"Maintenance, rehabilitation and replacement of existing
infrastructure has been deferred as funding has been redirected
to special projects such as the Freeway, PaRCIL and the
Emergency Communication System." Similar statements
can be found in the 2001 and 2002 budget documents.
Pouring
money into schemes like the $220 million Red Hill Creek
Expressway instead of properly taking care of Hamilton’s
existing infrastructure will inevitably result in more disasters
like the one this morning.
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