The NG Times Newspaper

The roadworks taking place outside the Municipal Centre in Kemptville has been puzzling residents for quite some time now. County Road 44 has been rerouted around a large hole in the ground. Workers and machines have been busy on what was clearly a major project. North Grenville’s Director of Public Works, Karen Dunlop, has provided the times with an explanation for all this activity.

“The big hole across the way on CR44 is going to be a sanitary pumping station. As part of this station, there is an approach pipe which will serve as the storage capacity; and that is being prepped for under CR44, which is causing the traffic lane realignment in the short term.”

The inevitable question arises: who is paying for this new facility, and Karen explained that also: “This initiative is being paid for, and front ended, by the developers of the TEMPO subdivision as part of a service-in-lieu agreement, approved by Council as part of the subdivision agreement process and funded through Development Charges charged to the TEMPO subdivision”.

The main reason for the new facility is the population growth that has been projected to take place, especially in what is known as the North West quadrant in the coming decades. The quadrant lies between County Roads 43 and 44, where house building has been progressing at rapid pace recently. More than 1,500 homes have been approved by the Municipality in that area, and this will put a major stress on the town’s water and sewage systems.

Plans for the development of the NW Quadrant had been before Council for quite a few years, but the nature of those developments has changed a great deal in that time. Wetlands, which were originally part of the attraction strategy for residential development in the area, have been drained and tree cover has been removed completely.

Last year, the Municipality tendered for a study of the system of Development Charges used to pay for such infrastructure changes. Development Charges were considered insufficient to cover infrastructure demands in the North West quadrant, possibly because housing density appears to be significantly higher than originally approved by previous Councils. The municipality sought a new study, as “any additional Special Area Levy that might result from it would only affect properties in the NW Quadrant”.

The study, provided by Watson & Associates and delivered in November of last year, calculated the required level of Development Charges that would be levied on developers in order to pay for the necessary infrastructure for stormwater management in the North West quadrant.

And now that the work on the pumping station has begun, it is expected that it will be completed in time to serve the quadrant’s needs over the next twenty years. This is assuming that population growth meets projected levels. Karen Dunlop points anyone interested in the details of this and other infrastructure issues in North Grenville to the Stantec Report, which is available on the municipal web site.

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