KIRKLAND LAKE - A local resident has spoken out about their concerns relating to water and wastewater rates increasing for 2024.
During a public meeting held on Tuesday (Feb. 20), Kirkland Lake resident Stephane Bernard raised concerns to council about increasing water rates by 1.7 per cent and wastewater rates by 3.5 per cent.
The hike means a starting flat rate for a private house or apartment per quarter is $54.92 and $45.51 for sewer. In 2023, the starting flat rates were $54 per quarter for water and $43.97 for sewer.
“With the report that was marked for the 1.7 and 3.5 for the next 20 to 25 years, I was kind of shocked that it would go up $800 or so for those amount of years. For me and my wife, we may be OK in dealing with it over the correspondence of those years, but what I'm concerned is the ones that are on fixed income,” he said.
“When I did my calculations, because I'm very proactive in paying it every two weeks so that when I get the bill, I owe nothing, between the water bill and the house taxes, I'm going from $50 to $83 every two weeks to $83 to $210 every two weeks, which is kind of concerning for me because it's money, yes, investing it in Kirkland Lake and getting things done, but again, for fixed earners, it may not be as easy for them. And we have a lot of older population in Kirkland Lake, which may be hurting further down the road.”
SEE: Water, sewer rate hike on tap in Kirkland Lake
A draft bylaw establishing the 2024 water and wastewater rates will be brought forward at council’s next regular meeting on March 4.
Directly following the public meeting, a regular meeting was held where council heard a presentation from Eric Neilson, the regional manager for Northeastern Ontario for Ontario Clean Water Agency (OCWA) regarding some 2023 highlights.
In response to Neilson’s comments that the town is losing 50 per cent of its water, Coun. Rick Owen said it’s “a big problem.”
“Can you imagine if Agnico Eagle was only getting 50 per cent of the gold that they mined? I mean, they'd be out of business… Council and staff are currently looking at different ways of bringing that down, but of course, that problem didn't happen overnight and it's not going to be solved overnight. So, yeah, that's a big problem,” he said.
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Though the town has metres at commercial properties, residential properties don’t. Neilson’s report listed many benefits water meters could offer including maximizing service life of infrastructure and reduction in waste generation.
Owen said the town’s current system doesn’t make sense.
“As for meters, I grew up with meters in southern Ontario — I want to note that my wife used to be the water billing clerk for the town of Kirkland Lake — and the current system we have now makes no sense,” he said.
“For instance, my wife and I live in the same house. It’s just two of us. But if I decide to split one bedroom into two, my water rates go up… In modern houses where they tend to be open concept, they're getting a better deal on the water because it's open concept… You don't have a living room or a dining room and blah, blah, blah.”
Right now, Owen said he has no incentive to reduce his water usage.
“But if I'm metered, and with my Scottish background, you can be guaranteed I'm cutting back on my water. So politically, it’s a hard issue,” he said.
“I think previously, the big problem was the cost of the meters. It's a one-time huge cost and that would be the only thing. There's no funding to do that. At one point there was, now I don't believe there is. But I wouldn't rule out meters and I think it's big to throw now because maybe in 10 years we'll have meters.”
Coun. Casey Owens said he plans to investigate the installation of water meters in all new builds within the town.
