21ST CENTURY AWAITS WAINFLEET
FURTHER TO MR. WATTS' RECENT LETTER IN THE TRIBUNE, I THINK IT'S TIME THAT WAINFLEET MOVE INTO THE 21ST CENTURY ALONG WITH THE REST OF CANADA.
MISINFORMED PEOPLE WITH PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS, SPREADING UNTRUTHS ARE ALWAYS AFRAID OF CHANGE. WAINFLEET CAN STILL REMAIN A RURAL COMMUNITY, JUST MODERNIZED.
DO YOU REALLY THINK IT'S OK FOR PEOPLE TO HAVE TO BOIL THEIR WATER EVERY SINGLE DAY, YEAR AFTER YEAR? DO YOU THINK IT'S OK FOR PEOPLE TO HAVE TO CONTINUALLY WORRY ABOUT GETTING SICK FROM THE WATER THEY DRINK?
YOU DON'T NEED TO LIVE ON THE LAKESHORE TO UNDERSTAND ITS DYNAMICS ANYMORE THAN YOU NEED TO LIVE ON THE SUN TO KNOW IT'S HOT.
THE PRIME MINISTER LIVES IN OTTAWA. DOES THAT MEAN HE'S UNABLE TO MAKE DECISIONS ABOUT TORONTO, OR SOMEWHERE IN B.C.?
WE ALL LIVE IN AND AROUND WAINFLEET AND WHAT GOES ON HERE AFFECTS US ALL.
VALERIE CASTER
WAINFLEET
'WANT CITY WATER - MOVE TO THE CITY'
In response to Valerie Caster's April 15 letter, "21st century awaits Wainfleet," condemning Mr. Watt as well as most of the people on the lakeshore for opposing the water and sewer system. We live here. We drink the water. We treat our water, thus the reason we do not worry about its quality. We have treatment systems in place to take care of our water (something people with municipal water do not do but probably should). We have our water tested and maintain our septic systems. We aren't sick.
That is not to say there aren't those who do not take care of their systems, but then there are people like that all over Wainfleet and elsewhere.
I, along with others, do not want municipal water forced on us as then I definitely will have to boil my water. Municipal water contains chlorine, a carcinogen.
You don't have to finance this outrageously priced project. You will not face losing your home that you have put everything into, where you raised your children.
Wainfleet isn't just a group of houses or prime real estate to developers. It's a community. It's home.
If you want city water - move to the city.
I realize you are on the secondary planning committee for the lakeshore, as published in The Tribune last week. While on that committee, please remember - not all of us want to sell out. Wainfleet is our home. Not just a financial investment.
You are expected to work for the best of all of the community, not just your own interests and those of investors.
Lee Bott
Wainfleet
PIPE WOULD CHANGE DYNAMIC AND SOAK PROPERTY OWNERS
This letter is in rebuttal to the April 15 letter by Valerie Caster, "21st century awaits Wainfleet."
In her first statement, she thinks it's time for Wainfleet to move into the 21st century.
But fact is, the concrete pipe type of sewer that she would like to see modernize Wainfleet dates back to the late 19th century and sewers that this system is patterned after have been dated back to 3750 BC. Hooking up to a system that requires the dumping of untreated sewage during a rainstorm directly into our surface water to prevent flooding of people's homes with sewage is not a good solution to modernize Wainfleet. This system also wastes tremendous energies and taxpayers' dollars treating the same rainwater as sewage due to leaking infrastructure and an antiquated design.
The simple question that has to be asked of the writer is, does she boil her water daily for her family? Does she know anyone in Wainfleet that boils their water before using it? Boiling is also an ancient form of water purification. There are a multitude of technologies on the market to create potable water. Some can even be carried in a pocket and will turn the foulest swampy water into safe potable water. Anyone with suspect water will have a purification system within their home. It should be noted that the water sources for the region are also not safe to drink without treatment.
Spending $75 million on a project for Wainfleet's 1,400 lakeshore homes when the annual budget of Wainfleet is $5 million and the water and wastewater budget for all of the region is $93 million is irresponsible. Especially when landowners who live on the lakeshore are expected to shoulder a large portion of the financial burden. Some estimates are upwards of $30,000 per homeowner.
I believe that this gives someone living along the lakeshore a better understanding of the dynamics, especially the financial ones. I do have a vested interest, as I have a desire to raise my family next to the house I grew up in, in a neighbourhood with similar values and dynamic.
Large-scale estate development will change that dynamic.
None of my neighbours require fences to be good neighbours. There is enough property between us to make fences irrelevant - one thing that would change the dynamic if smaller building lots were allowed if water and sewer services were installed.
Developing estates along the lakeshore could see small wetlands, natural bio-filters (helping the problems with ground water) drained and turned into subdivisions.
Yes, this will affect us all - some with a credit to our bank account some with a debit.
Wade Smith
NO LIVING IN FEAR ON THE LAKESHORE
Ms. Caster wrote about Mr. Watts' recent letter about waste management and water supply issues in Wainfleet.
May I respectfully suggest to Ms. Caster that if she has any problems in understanding what is going on, she contact Mrs. Betty Konc or any other member of the newly formed ratepayers association to enlighten her.
Also, some of us do not understand her letter's reference to the sun being hot and the prime minister in Ottawa.
I have been living in Wainfleet on the lakeshore for almost a year now and we do not boil our water. Nor do we or others live in constant fear of getting ill.
Pat Hunte
Wainfleet
250 RESIDENTS CAN'T BE WRONG
I had to respond to Valerie Caster's April 15 letter, "21st century awaits Wainfleet."
We moved to Wainfleet for its rural living and, yes, we have moved into the 21st century very easily.
We have installed a very sophisticated water-purification system and would not have it replaced with a connection to city water from Port Colborne, thank you very much. At the last ratepayers association meeting, we had representation of about 250 people. Can all these concerned residents be wrong?
Obviously you don't live on the lakeshore, for if you did, would you be willing to cough up $30,000 to $40,000 to hook up to the Big Pipe - even when you have an approved, sophisticated septic system and a water-purification system that is second to none? I think not.
Adrian Goemans
Wainfleet
WELL TREATMENT SYSTEMS SAVE TAX MONEY
I am in the heart of the boil water advisory area for Wainfleet and my well untreated gets a bad reading.
I, like many others, have a UV system in place to treat all of my water. After treatment it gets a zero rating. We drink it all the time, with no chlorine taste and no chlorine or alum attacking our health.
UV systems are relatively inexpensive and my system does not cost taxpayers a penny. Servicing me with a pipeline will cost me dearly but will also cost taxpayers.
Not everyone is against reasonable development, but we are all against destroying a lifestyle. Even proposed developments have included state-of-the-art treatment systems that will not cost taxpayers a penny.
It's interesting to note that treatment to remove the harmful substances in municipal water systems are more expensive than systems to treat our local well water, because of the contaminants these systems have to deal with.
The Walkerton tragedy has been driving this issue. You can monitor your own well but will find it difficult to monitor the municipal system, which will certainly look after any spare dollars you may have.
Bernie Cusack
Wainfleet
WAINFLEET WATER PURIFIER WORKS WELL
I have to comment that it's hard to believe that there is anyone living in a rural community today that gets up every morning and boils their water.
I moved to Wainfleet back in the 20th century and bought a water purifier. My water is perfect to drink, I don't spend one second worrying about getting sick.
Ms. Caster referred to understanding the dynamics of living on the lakeshore. These are the same dynamics for many rural communities, and if you choose to live in a rural setting you should personally take appropriate measures to look after your health.
If Ms. Caster has the thousands of dollars required to pay for a water pipeline from Port Colborne to her door, then why is she boiling water when she could put a small investment into a 21st-century water purifier?
Greta Hales
Wainfleet
URBAN SPRAWL ONLY BENEFITS BUILDERS
Posted By ADAM SHOALTS
Country fields stretched as far as the eye could see, punctuated here and there by thick stands of deciduous woodlots. It was a quiet, sleepy little out of the way rural town.
Creeks flowed through the fields, and in spring teemed with spawning northern pike. Deer and coyotes would pass through the woods and over the rich agricultural lands.
Then, seemingly overnight, all this changed.
What was once a rural paradise and small farming community, was rapidly transformed into a massive, impersonal, monotonous, sprawling sea of suburban housing.
I am referring to Binbrook, once known locally for Lake Niapenco, and now notorious for being a prime example of the worse sort of unmanaged urban sprawl.
The town is simply no longer recognizable as Binbrook: in fact, it is virtually indistinguishable from a Toronto suburb or any other mega-city suburb.
All sense of distinctness, of the individual character of a particular place, has given way in recent times to the massive, impersonal subdivisions that are constructed as cheaply as possible and with as little variation in home design as possible.
These sprawling subdivisions radiate outwards from major cities, inexorably swallowing up more and more of the rural lands that once dominated southern Ontario.
The result is Binbrook: a place where what was once field and forest is now a sea of suburbia that engulfs a mind-staggering swath of countryside.
But readers need not drive to Binbrook in order to view this spectacle for themselves: if our politicians and municipal planners have it their way, it will be possible to view this incredible magic trick, in which countryside is turned into Toronto suburbia practically overnight, right here in Niagara.
Actually, to be fair, there are already many examples across Niagara of rampant, uncontrolled urban sprawl having engulfed whole tracks of forests and farmland.
For example, in St. Catharines just north of the Niagara Escarpment, one can find the same urban sprawl of near-identical residential development.
The future, however, seems to hold even bigger transformations that will make the village of Fenwick and the rural community of Wainfleet into the next Binbrook.
Local developers recently announced plans to double the population of Fenwick by means of a massive subdivision housing project in a currently rural area that contains significant wetlands, forest and agricultural lands.
Meanwhile, in Wainfleet, the battle over the Region's proposed municipal water and sewer pipeline continues to rage. Of course, the water and sewer pipeline is a thinly veiled attempt to open the door for future development along the Lake Erie shoreline.
It was the same story in Binbrook, when the big pipe came down Highway 56.
A preview of what is to come has already been put in motion at the former Easter Seals camp along Lake Erie, where crowded development is underway.
None of this bodes well for the future of Welland.
Instead of redeveloping the unused industrial lands of the Rose City, which could help revitalize the downtown core by infusing desperately needed consumers for the local shops and businesses, the major housing projects are being built away from Welland's urban area.
Indeed, it remains a mystery why with so much potential to construct new homes in areas that are already urban or zoned industrial but unused, city and town planners are still directing development outwards rather than inwards.
Both big cities and small rural communities suffer as a result.
Former Ontario premier Mike Harris, a man who by anyone's standards was a friend to business, said in 2001 that "inefficient and unplanned growth could lead to higher infrastructure costs, higher taxes, more pollution and less green space."
Indeed it does.
The rural areas are losing not only prime farmlands; residents are almost unanimously dismayed by the transformation of their quiet rural communities into the giant subdivisions many of them moved to the countryside to escape from.
Wildlife is losing already scarce habitat and the fight against global warming is dealt a blow by making walking to work impractical and re-entrenching society's dependence on the car.
Thanks to sprawl, local taxpayers and homeowners typically see their taxes increase in order to cover the heavy cost of new municipal water and sewer pipelines.
Moreover, the destruction of wetlands often leads to flooding and water runoff problems.
Whereas wetlands once provided local flood and pollution control for free, by destroying these wetlands it inevitably necessitates expensive infrastructure projects to deal with the resulting overflow and runoff troubles.
Such problems have already occurred in Fenwick around the new and still expanding Cherry Ridge subdivision.
Urban sprawl may not even benefit the new homeowners that move into the expanding suburbs. An American study conducted by Smart Growth America found strong evidence to link obesity and sprawl.
The underlying factors are clear: people who live in sprawling, car-dependent subdivisions are likely to walk less, weigh more and have high blood pressure.
In fact, it is difficult to perceive whom exactly all this rampant urban sprawl actually benefits: except, perhaps, the developers themselves.
n Adam Shoalts' website is www.adamshoalts.com.
NOT WORRIED ABOUT BOILING WATER OR GETTING SICK,
SAYS WAINFLEETER
Ms. Castor is correct in that it isn't right for anybody to have to boil their water everyday, year after year.
The problem with the boil water advisory Ms. Castor is referring to is that there is not nor has there ever been any documented evidence of anybody along the lakeshore that has been sick or that has died from drinking so-called tainted water.
The advisory in Wainfleet was put in place to try and convince the COMRIF grant people, on the second application, that we are in dire need of this pipeline, when in actual fact regional officials have no idea how many wells there are along the servicing route or where those wells are or if all of us have tainted water, because they have never quantified the so-called problem.
They have "extrapolated" their data to make it look like we all have poor quality water, which is pretty far from the actual truth.
Of the 1,365 homes and cottages along the servicing route, there are about 550 wells (information obtained from MOE records). All the rest of the residents have access to other forms of potable water.
There are plenty of communities in this province - about 1,700 I believe - some that have had boil advisories in place for as long as six years or more.
I for one own a well. I do not boil my water as I have a treatment system on my well that is regularly maintained and that I trust.
I do not worry about getting sick from drinking tainted water, nor do any of the other well owners along the lakeshore who have told me the same thing in my door-to-door campaign against this project for the last three summers.
Trust me, no one is worried about boiling their water or getting sick. That is simply not true and is a scare tactic that those few who want to see this pipeline happen are using to justify the huge cost to those of us that don't want or need the so-called good water coming from Port Colborne. That lovely water that will cost us an arm and a leg and is full of chlorine, which is a carcinogen. Why would we want that?
Why do we need to have massive development to be part of the 21st century? What is wrong with having controlled development in areas that should be developed and not in areas that in the future might be needed to feed us?
What is wrong with the countryside remaining countryside? What is wrong with maintaining the rural flavour of an historical agricultural community?
Why must we clutter up the ambience of this rural community with more housing just to satisfy those looking to make a buck on development? Why is it that those in the minority, like developers, get to have the last say, when it should be the majority not being listened to who are saying we don't want this to happen?
I for one do not want to see us become another Binbrook, which is surely what will happen if the developers get their way over this pipeline project.
Betty Konc,
President,
Wainfleet Ratepayers Association
Wainfleet's boil water advisory is 'a farce'
Re: "21st century awaits Wainfleet"letter, April 15.
Valerie Caster has no interest in clean drinking water. If she did she would be on board with the rest of us homeowners who want alternatives to the big pipe.
As far as moving into the 21st century goes, what happened in the city of Walkerton? They were in the 21st century and look at what happened to them. No thanks. I want nothing to do with city water. I am quite happy looking after my own water system - and by the way, I have lived here for more than 30 years and have never boiled my water once to drink, only for my coffee.
Look at the boil water recommendation as I do: a farce beyond all proportions. If you have the proper treatment system in place in your house and maintain it you do not have to worry about boiling your water, or using potentially contaminated city water that would not make just one person sick, but all of us.
William Hart
Wainfleet
They are listening and know we aren't going away!
Here's hoping for some changes to the problems .
