Unanimous approval by Tiny council was given to submit an application for a provincial grant which, if successful, would provide septage services for the entire township within the next 30 years.
The Housing Enabling Water System Fund (HEWSF) Intake 2 septage application grant was just one option provided at the recent special council meeting, but nearly an hour was devoted to its importance, urgency, and the effect it could have for all residents.
If the grant were successful, a $5 million cost to upgrade the Midland Wastewater Treatment Centre to accept Tiny Township’s septage would cover 73 per cent of the cost ($3.6 million) while the municipality would need to spend just $1.3 million (27 per cent) spread over a three-year period.
It had been introduced in August as a suggestion by Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma during a joint delegation with Midland at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) conference, as both municipalities sought government assistance.
Once aware of the HEWSF grant, Tiny public works director Tim Leitch worked in tandem with Midland environment and infrastructure executive director John Thompson to have the application option available for Tiny council consideration prior to its November 1 deadline.
“We were exchanging emails on weekends and in the evenings,” Leitch told MidlandToday after the meeting. “John and I both follow the same kind of work ethic, and this is what we had to get done.”
Both men praised their staff, as did Tiny council members, for handling the excess workload to get the application prepared in time.
“We’re very happy to have been able to assist our neighbours, hopefully, in one of the options that they may choose to take,” said Thompson. “It’s certainly nice to allow our neighbours to advance and obtain some provincial funds to get them to their goals. I’m sure that the town of Midland are pleased to be able to help.”
While Tiny council members did choose to approve submission of the grant application, Evans stressed it wasn’t the final step but only one option, albeit a significant one.
“Frankly, there are a plethora of options for us,” Evans said. “Seeing that we have nothing in place right now almost makes it harder to come up with one (option) because you don’t have anything to compare it against.”
He added that a successful HEWSF grant application could benefit not only Tiny Township, but possibly others in the province.
“This is a unique application for them (the Ministry of Infrastructure), and they’re having to work through it in terms of: ‘We’ve never had an application from two municipalities working for a common goal’. It’s something that I think we lay the groundwork for other municipalities to come up with similar agreements, maybe not just with respect to whatever large capital investments need to be done.”
Due to the narrow focus of the application, Evans began the special council meeting by requesting that if questions were posed to staff that they be focused solely on the topic and not a larger conversation about septage in the township.
Leitch explained that septic systems or holding tanks are on a roughly five-year cycle to be pumped out, but field application (or spreading) was an option in summer.
“What those fields don't do though is marine waste and Porta-Potty waste; that's one of the restrictions that they cannot deal with, and that's one of the struggles that the wastewater treatment plants also have to deal with,” said Leitch.
Evans raised a point that a Simcoe County direction was considered last month regarding sampling all private water supply wells for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances – otherwise called PFAS or ‘forever chemicals’ – as part of its county landfill monitoring program. As field application had been known to leech into township waters from spring runoffs, Evans added the point as an item of additional information.
The cost of $1.5 million to Tiny residents raised concern for Coun. Dave Brunelle, but CAO Robert Lamb met that caution with a tempered response.
“Giving approval to submit the application is not giving approval to go ahead with the project,” stated Lamb. “Your senior administration, your legal team, have way more questions than there are still answers to at this point in time; but without getting an application in, we don’t have a chance to get the funding.”
The HEWSF intake 2 septage application report can be viewed on the agenda page on the Township of Tiny website.
Archives of council meetings are available to view on the township’s YouTube channel.
