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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Hike in water, sewer rates tabled to fund upgrade

By: Bartley Kives

Posted: 11/7/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

WATER and sewer rates are going up in Winnipeg again next year, as the city continues to absorb the cost of a $1.8-billion waste-water upgrade that won't be completed until 2030.

The average Winnipeg household will see its annual water and sewer bill rise by $21.22 to $816.60 in 2010, based on rate increases that will go before city council's public works committee on Tuesday.

Water and sewer rates have been rising since 2003, when the province ordered the city to upgrade its sewage-treatment facilities following a discharge of almost one million cubic metres of raw sewage into the Red River as result of an accident at the North End Water Pollution Control Centre.

The $1.8-billion waste-water upgrade, which also involves the replacement of combined sewers, is the main factor driving up water and sewer rates. Water and waste spending is financed through water and sewer bills, not through property taxes.

In 2010, water and sewer spending is expected to be $272 million, with $71 million going toward the construction of new facilities alone.

According to a water-and-waste report to city council, the precise amount of future spending is difficult to predict until the city costs out future component of the waste-water upgrade, creates a new water and sewer utility and finds out whether new Manitoba Premier Greg Selinger will agree to amend a provincial ruling that requires the city to build additional nitrogen-removal facilities into coming upgrades at its sewage-treatment plants.

Over the past two years, the city and province have butted heads over solid nitrogen removal, which most freshwater scientists believe will actually do more harm to the Lake Winnipeg ecosystem than good. The scientists have argued Winnipeg, which is responsible for about six per cent of the nutrient loading that contributes to the algae blooms and low-oxygen dead zones in Lake Winnipeg, should focus solely on removing phosphorus, which contributes to the blooms, and ammonia, which is toxic to fish.

The city believes the extra nitrogen-removal step will cost $350 million to build and $9 million to carry out every year -- and will do more harm than good. Under former premier Gary Doer, the province did not agree.

But on the floor of council last month, Mayor Sam Katz said he met with Selinger and believes the new premier will listen to the scientific community.

"We have a new premier. He's not up-to-date on this and it's my job to get him as much data as possible," Katz said afterward in an interview. "He definitely has an open mind and he wants the information."

A spokesman for Selinger, however, said the premier's conversation with the mayor was a private matter and the province's position on nitrogen-removal has not changed. "There was an exchange of views and information. When there's something to say publicly, we will say it," the spokesman said.

Regardless of the decision on nitrogen, the city is still seeking more federal and provincial money to pay for the waste-water upgrade. In their report to council, water and waste officials say the city still has not seen $206 million in upgrade money promised by the province during the 2007 throne speech.

"To date, no agreement has been signed," the report reads.

If approved by the public works committee, the water and sewer rate increases will still go before executive policy committee and council as a whole.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 7, 2009 B1

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