London won’t be expanding its sanitary sewage service for the build of roughly 39 new homes in Arva, but councillors did vote to tweak the community’s agreement moving forward.
The change means Arva won’t be limited to adding the equivalent of 10 single family dwelling homes to the system per year. Instead, the increase is capped at 50 homes over a five-year period, acknowledging a ‘carry-over’ of unused capacity.
“I think that’s a very reasonable step forward,” said councillor Jesse Helmer, who added a provision to remove part of Arva’s treatment area.
“The existing agreement had a sewage treatment area that matched the boundary of Arva at the time. But they’ve since reduced their settlement area,” he explained.
The matter, which led to a split vote at an earlier planning and environment committee meeting, came with more than an hour of debate.
“If at first, you don’t succeed, try try try again,” stated deputy mayor Paul Hubert. “This is the fourth time in my time on council that we’ve had this same conversation. Every four years, without fail, the county is at the door, trying again to get us to open up capacity.”
Councillor Jared Zaifman was quick to point out the matter wasn’t one of opening capacity.
“As far as my knowledge is concerned, this capacity exists.”
Hubert continued with concerns about giving neighbouring communities subsidized services.
“Every dollar we spend on economic development in the city of London, every dollar we invest in tourism in London benefits people who live in the city of London,” he said.
“But they don’t build libraries in the county. They pay a little extra and they use the London public library,” explained Hubert.
“Of course they want us to expand and amend this agreement. They want to increase their assessment base, but it’s in direct competition with builders in London and the growth of the assessment base in London.”
The city started providing sanitary sewage service to Arva 17 years ago.
Before anything is set in stone city staff will negotiate terms of a new agreement with Middlesex Centre.