October 28, 2003

Dear Mayor Chiarelli:

Regional Council voted (15-3) on March 11, 1998, to proceed with the selection of an on-site wastewater treatment solution for Munster that could meet specific treatment /discharge parameters, do it within the MOE compliance schedule of approximately one year, and cost less than the proposed lagoon-expansion option. (Reference: Your letter of April 1, 1998.)

It is recorded in the minutes that you voted against the on-site option. Subsequently you have been a strong supporter of the pipeline proposal that clearly did not conform to the fixed-price, design-build "Request for Proposals", of June 1998. Unqualified pipeline proposals were accepted and fast-tracked to first choice against the recommendation of the most recent engineering report without adequate evaluation of the environmental, cost and safety issues. The result is that the City now prefers to build the costlier pipeline on a cost plus basis for an option that is associated with a number of health and environmental issues, in place of a fixed cost, cheaper, environmentally sound, on-site solution.

Amidst the conspicuous absence of any coherent rationale for the pipeline option, many area residents have concluded that the only remaining explanation for the pipeline selection, ---(with an unnecessary 2-km detour to the Franktown Road)---, is that it is intended to include wastewater servicing for the planned residential building development ---1 ½ km. west on the Franktown Road--- at the Riverbend Golf and Country Club. Since both you and the current ward councillor have ignored the illegal expansion of this golf course – illegal because it occurred without proper approvals - there is growing public concern that the pipeline selection, itself, and rumoured plans of its intended connection to the golf course lots for development, would further financially benefit members of your family, without the public’s benefit of transparency and due process.

Please help put these rumours and concerns to rest, and tell us unequivocally that this is not the basis for the "hidden agenda", as believed locally. While the pipeline may be a windfall for land development at the golf course, City ratepayers would be the big losers. The additional burden to the taxpayers of $17,000,000, plus the already-spent funds to date of $15,000,000, does not justify rejection of the safer, environmentally-beneficial, $3,200,000 on-site system. Furthermore, rejection of the lower-cost on-site treatment plant, just to extend the costlier pipeline sewer-service to the doorstep of the subject development, is not in keeping with the recently announced plans to restrict near-future new housing developments to areas within the Green Belt.

A forcemain that is directed south to the Franktown Road, in the opposite direction of its Kanata destination, that transverses the provincially significant wetlands of the Richmond Fen, that passes (under pressure) through the shallow-well aquifer of Richmond, risking the health, lives and environmental quality of residents in its path, and that then crosses the Jock River at two locations --- all at roughly five times the cost of an on-site treatment plant--- seems completely irrational.

Your answer to this issue, of immense public concern, is urgently requested.

Sincerely,

Richard Bendall (Member, Munster Lagoon Watchdog Committee)            Signed                         

Brian Finch (President, Friends of the Jock River)                                     Signed                         

Ted Brown (President, Richmond Village Association)                               Signed                         

Encl:
Letter from Regional Chair Bob Chiarelli, April 1, 1998    (VIEW)
Advertisement , Ottawa Citizen, Re: June, 1998 – Request for Proposals     (VIEW)