Ontario Municipal Board hears about Queen Street stinker

Property owners on Queen Street West made it clear to the Ontario Municipal Board this week: making them pay for new sanitary sewers they don't want is an idea that stinks.

A year ago they told Council in no uncertain terms that they didn't want any new sanitary sewers installed in front of their businesses and homes.

But the City installed them anyway, as part of the new transportation corridor project (shown).

Yesterday, Ontario Municipal Board member Gary O'Connor was here in Sault Ste. Marie to hear the case.

The Queen Street West crowd argued that the main reason the sanitary sewers were changed was because the old ones couldn't handle the weight of increased traffic load from the transportation corridor.

"From what I was told," said Lorena Tridico, "they will have to grade the road down a bit and the pipes won't be able to take the load of the trucks because of it."

Tridico was one of several property owners and interested Saultites who spoke at Thursday's hearing.

Maurice Kukoraitis, the City's director of engineering design and buildings, said that the sanitary sewers in that area were installed in 1911, had been used beyond their expected lifespan and were showing signs of wear.

"Evidence from the sanitary sewer cam and other indications showed there were cracks in the pipes," Kukoraitis testified.

The Queen Street property owners also argued that they shouldn't have to pay for any sewer replacement because due process was not followed.

Once a by-law is petitioned against it can't be brought up again for two years said Ron Sheares, who appeared as a volunteer advocate for the Queen Street property owners at Thursday's OMB hearing.

"The objective when they signed the petition [in 2004] was to stop the work," he said. "But [the City] came back just over a year later and created a brand new bylaw under a different name and tried to push the same thing through again."

"The process is already messed up in a kind of unfixable way," said Sheares. "There's no way the Ontario Municipal Board is going to tell them to take all those pipes out of the ground and put back the old ones."

City Solicitor Lorie Bottos said that to complete the transportation corridor, Council had to look for other legal alternatives to do the sewer upgrade while the road was dug up.

"Had the sewers collapsed soon after the road was replaced the City would have been placed in the ridiculous situation of digging up a recently constructed road," Bottos said. "Council has the right, under section five [of the Municipal Act], to come back and say 'we need this work done'."

In his summarizing comments, Bottos said that the property owners in this case had been treated the same as anyone else in the city.

The property owners argued that their case is different from the others because it's not a simple local improvement, but an upgrade for a transportation corridor most people in the city will use.

Bottos said that many people in the city use Second Line, Chambers Avenue and other streets on which property owners have had to pay for local improvements.

The Queen Street group said that due process was not followed and that their attempts to protect their rights were blockaded by some City staff and elected officials.

"We were not given enough time to prepare," said Tridico. "We only heard about this second bylaw a few hours before Council was due to meet on it."

Tridico said the property owners felt bulldozed into the transportation corridor and that insult was added to injury when they were expected to pay for something they didn't want in the first place.

She said that Council should have given property owners enough time to commission an independent engineering study to see if the sewers really needed to be replaced or not.

"Instead, the decision was made and the pipes changed before we even had a chance to say anything about it," Tridico said. "Now we'll never really know if those pipes needed to be replaced or not because they're gone."

Bottos said that the plan for the transportation corridor, including the steps to replace the sanitary sewers on Queen Street West, was sent to Tridico with enough time for her to object before the Council meeting and that she had known about the transportation corridor itself for some time.

Tridico said she never received the documents Bottos was referring to.

When the hearing concluded after 6 p.m. yesterday, Ontario Municipal Board member O'Connor said that he would review the arguments and precedents and would render his decision as quickly as possible.

"I expect to have my decision prepared and returned to you within a month," O'Connor said.

If he finds in favour of the City, Queen Street West property owners will have to pay $30.50 for every metre of frontage on the street for the new sewers.

Bottos said they could take the option to pay that amount over 10 years time with eight percent interest.

Earlier SooToday.com coverage of this story

Re-routing trucks would cost $11 million Neighbourhood raises a stink about sewer fees Lorena appeals sewer stink to the Ontario Municipal Board