As of October 22nd, more than $218 million dollars of funding for infrastructure projects is on the table for British Columbia communities. Last week, council gave staff its support in applying to the New Building Canada Fund for support in the construction of a water treatment plant on Bowen Island.
Building such a plant is predicted to cost $7.5 million, and Bowen Island has $1 million set aside in a reserve fund that could be used for the project.
“Through this grant, we could ask for $2.5 million from Federal Government and $2.5 million from the province. That would leave us requiring a loan of $1.5 million to build the water treatment plant, and Cove Bay water users would need to approve that loan through a referendum,” says Kirsten Watson, the municipality’s manager of finance.
The last time this grant was available was in 2009, when Bowen Island received 1.4 million for the upgrade of a sewage treatment facility.
“With that, we increased the capacity of the sewage treatment plant from roughly 100 homes to 200 homes,” says Watson.
Councillor Cro Lucas, who has acted as the liaison to the CBWS Advisory Committee over the past three years, says that the competition for this money is going to be stiffer this time around.
“Infrastructure across the province, from sewage systems to roads and bridges, is in decay. There are a lot of communities in need right now,” he says. “There are very few municipalities who have the tax base required to tackle these projects. However, based on conversations we had at the Union of BC Municipalities, we’ve been advised to look at our infrastructure in terms of phases, so that we can make several applications for smaller amounts over the 10 year period in question.”
Lucas ads that one factor that might work to the advantage of Bowen Island in this case, is that most of the communities competing for this grant money already have water treatment plants.
“It’s not as though we have one but it needs an upgrade,” says Lucas. “We lack one entirely, and we have directives from Vancouver Coastal Health saying that we need to create a roadmap to building a water treatment plant and that this is a requirement.”
Municipal staff with the assistance of an engineering consultant will take on the task of filling out the grant application. This process could take up to two months.
