Back to the drawing board.
Following Sundre council's recent decision to for now abort plans to connect the east side with water and sewage services, operators of the Tall Timber Leisure Park face uncertainty heading into the future.
“We've been at this nearly four years,” said Pat Eisler, president of the Tall Timber board of directors, referring to efforts invested in working with town and Mountain View County officials to connect the park to Sundre's water and sewage systems.
After seeing a letter from the town's engineering firm BSEI dated Feb. 24, 2014, the leisure park's board of directors had every reason to anticipate the project could move forward and planned accordingly.
“BSEI has reviewed the current capacity of the potable water distribution system and has confirmed that the Town of Sundre has adequate capacity within the system to service this development,” reads the letter signed by Sean Popplewell, a project technician with BSEI.
A nearly identical letter also dated Feb. 24, 2014 stated the Town of Sundre would also have adequate capacity in its wastewater collection system to proceed with the project.
“That's why we jumped on it to move it forward,” said Eisler.
But following an in-camera discussion during council's June 6 meeting regarding the east-side services, a motion was carried to instruct administration to advise Mountain View County, Tall Timber Leisure Park and Suncor Energy Inc. that the Town of Sundre is unable to provide them with water or wastewater sewer system services at this time.
Information was presented to council from administration and BSEI over the last 18 months, which involved providing data obtained from a review of the town's wastewater capacity and ongoing water quality and treatment research and data collection. That information ultimately resulted in council's decision, said Angie Lucas, acting CAO and director of planning and operational services.
“The town will continue to work towards meeting Alberta Environment's new regulations for water quality and treatment and pursue funding to increase the wastewater capacity and treatment solutions in order to create a robust water and wastewater system for the town, which will be able to service a larger area in the future.”
When asked what had changed between now and the engineering firm's 2014 letter that declared Sundre had sufficient capacity, Mayor Terry Leslie said the town's growth had at the time been estimated to be at about one or two per cent — or 10-12 houses — per year. At that rate of growth, the town would have had sufficient capacity to connect services outside of the town's municipal boundary.
However, that growth rate did not account for the new Mountain View Seniors' Housing facility, which has 103 units, as well as a 37-unit development under construction west of the IGA and other industrial, commercial and residential projects that had already been promised services, he said.
“We need to make sure we honour our commitment to those folks.”
As town officials delved more into detail, it was determined there could be an issue regarding capacity so engineers have studied the situation more over the past year, he said.
“Now we're in a position where we know we're very close to capacity. We can't service anybody outside of our boundaries.”
“Apologies is all we can offer” to those outside the town's limits who anticipated being connected to its services, he said.
The leisure park's operators “are our neighbours”, and they help the local economy by bringing “a tremendous amount of people in our community” who shop and use Sundre's services, he said.
“It's a hard call,” the mayor said about having to put the east-side services on hiatus until the town increases its capacity.
And that might not be for as many as three years. It will take the engineers about six months to come up with a design, after which point town officials will have to pursue potential grants, followed by putting the project to tender and eventually construction. A best-case scenario would be roughly a year, but the project will more realistically take longer than that, he said.
“We're pressing forward as quickly as we can because we need a solution, but we don't want to rush to failure.”
So the plan to connect services to the east side isn't completely cancelled and officials want to keep the lines of communication open, he said.
“Once the town has implemented improvements to address both capacity and water quality issues it will be able to re-enter into discussions with Mountain View County with regards to providing both water and wastewater to Mountain View County landowners and residents,” Leslie wrote to Eisler in a letter dated June 7.
The upgrades to the town's water and sewage services should increase its overall capacity to a population of 7,000 from 3,500, which will allow Sundre to service any future requests, not only from within the municipality but the county as well, he told the Round Up.
“We regret that currently the Town of Sundre is unable to provide water and wastewater services to residents or businesses outside of the town's boundaries until the improvements are in place,” he wrote in the letter to Eisler.
So where does that leave Tall Timber Leisure Park in the meantime?
“It puts a considerable onus on us because we had built our strategy around the town. We've kind of been caught hung out to dry,” he said, adding, “we thought we had a plan moving forward.”
The decision to hold off on connecting water and sewage services to the east side has left the leisure park's board of directors back at Square 1, and new options will have to be considered, he said.
Additionally, attracting new business development on the outskirts of town will be more challenging following the town's announcement, he said.
“I don't know a company that would come outside the boundary of Sundre if they're told they won't be able to get utilities.”
