Municipal Monitor - March/April 2008 - (Page 8)

Covering By Rick Sgabellone the Cost W hen the Ministry of the Environment approved Regulation 453 of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) last August, it allowed its sister act, the Sustainable Water and Sewage Systems Act (SWSSA) to creep evercloser toward full implementation. SWSSA stipulates, among other things, that municipalities have detailed cost recovery plans to pay for water and sewage services. While regulations to support the Act have met various delays over the years, provisions of the SDWA help achieve similar objectives. The SDWA requires municipalities to acquire licences every five years to provide water services to their residents. There are five steps a municipality needs to take in order to acquire a licence: 1. Acquire a Drinking Water Works Permit for its drinking water system; 2. Acquire a permit to take water from a raw water supply, as per section 34 of the Ontario Water Resources Act; 3. Submit an operational plan for the system that satisfies requirements under the Act; 4. Have an accredited operating authority manage the system; and 5. Have a financial plan in place to outline how costs will be recovered. Tapping into safe, sustainable water and sewage services Most of the steps are already familiar to managers of Ontario water systems. For instance, according to Suchaet Bhardwaj, a policy advisor with the Ministry of Environment (MOE) who helped draft Regulation 453, the Drinking Water Works Permit simply replaces the existing Certificate of Approval municipalities already need to acquire. It is the financial considerations, which were covered by Regulation 453, that go furthest to making SWSSA a reality, representing the biggest change in how some water authorities do business. The SWSSA states that cost recovery plans should be long-term and address “source protection costs, operating costs, financing costs, renewal and replacement costs and improvement costs associated with extracting, treating or distributing water to the public.” However, Regulation 453 only requires each municipality to make a six-year projection of costs and outline how those costs will be recovered. Bhardwaj explains that outlining a cost recovery plan for the lifespan of a water system could prove to be too onerous a project for some municipalities. “Those provisions would constitute a significant amount of work for some and not so much for others,” he says. “So we decided to take a more flexible approach. Six years is a minimum. Some municipalities are taking a lifecycle approach by looking at the lifespan of their infrastructure. “The regulation doesn’t put an onerous burden on municipalities,” he adds. “We’re basically taking their (six-year) plans and making estimates based on the plans. This is just a first March/April 2008 8 • municipal MONITOR

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Municipal Monitor - March/April 2008

Municipal Monitor - March/April 2008 Contents President's Message: Stress and Change Viewpoint: Much Ado About Nothing? Covering the Cost: Tapping into Safe, Sustainable Water and Sewage Services Closed Session Investigations: What Do They Mean for Your Municipality? Subtle Sabotage: Female Bullying Trends in the Workplace Water Under the Bridge Municipal Memos Index to Advertisers

Municipal Monitor - March/April 2008

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