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| CARTOON - March 9, 2010 |
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| EDITORIAL - March 9, 2010 |
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| Commission should strive for clarity |
Leader Staff
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To ask who or what, exactly, will provide water to Barrhead in the coming years is to enter a murky area.
A technical committee formed by the town and county to set up a water commission is meeting behind closed doors to figure out those details. Still needed to be agreed upon, apparently, is the ownership structure of the water plant and water transmission lines and the rate structure the commission would use to calculate the cost of water.
While the councillors in their meetings surely have a number of issues they would like to discuss in private, it would be to the benefit of all for them to communicate their progress to the public. When what’s being discussed is the quality of water that residents will use and how much they will pay for it, clarity is what most people will be looking for. Surprises are not wanted.
Information about the technical committee’s meetings is scant. Once in a while, during councillors’ reports, a word or two will be mentioned, but there are no minutes taken.
The last bit of information to be publically tabled about the future of Barrhead’s water was a projection of costs that the committee forwarded to the county for consideration. The committee needed a motion that councillors understood there could be a "significant" increase in the cost of a cubic metre of water. More than doubling the cost of water is indeed significant. The rise in costs, if it does arrive, will apparently come from expensive filtration systems needed to meet new water standards in 2012.
That the technical committee has a number of issues to be decided in camera is fine. But one of those issues should not be the quality and cost of people’s water. The commission has been discussed for almost two years. The general public – and councillors not on the committee – deserve at least an update as to what they can expect to see coming out of their taps in the future. |
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