One-sided meeting

The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, December 17, 2003

At its second public information meeting about Munster Hamlet's wastewater situation, the City of Ottawa sent its best flim-flam team under the leadership of councillor Janet Stavinga to Richmond last Tuesday. The intent was to put their best spin on the city's money-wasting solution.

I say money-wasting because, even using the city's best, most favourable estimates, the sewage forcemain from Munster through the Richmond Fen wetlands, past 1,200 shallow wells, will still cost at minimum $2 million more than the alternative proposal of an onsite plant. A different engineering report that residents were given as information showed that the onsite option would cost only $3.8 million.

These forcemain cheerleaders danced around the question of additional costs for the forcemain, such as the Kanata connection and the Richmond pumping station. They refused or were unable or unprepared to answer other pointed questions about financial, environmental and health issues. Can Councillor Stavinga or Mayor Bob Chiarelli tell us what these actual costs are going to be?

Hank Helleman,
Richmond