More Water Woes

Many of you have indicated to me that you are very pleased that the province has finally ponied up and given the regional water commission some money.

I'm getting less pleased every time I think about it! 

The province is telling us that we MUST use this money to pay the huge penalty for refinancing our debt load.  An accountant did an audit of the whole regional water commission a couple of years ago.  At the general meeting in Acme over a year ago he recommended that the regional water commssion be given $6.2 million dollars to bring them up to a viable status.  Other water projects have been given funding up to 90% of the costs of construction.  Our water commission has received far less than that!   He suggested that wrong be righted.

He also noted that all attempts by the commission to sell its water have been thwarted by others while the provincial government sat back, saying and doing nothing!  This was after the province had promised the water commission members that it would help find customers for the water and help out any other way they could until the commission was self supporting!

But we received less than 2 million dollars!  We still have the original huge debt, it's just spread out over a longer term so the monthly payments will be less.   And the way I see it is-if the province comes up with some more money to buy down that debt we will have to pay those huge penalties again to lower the principle of the loan!  Those penalty payments are being paid into a fund created by the province using taxpayers' dollars.

Are we paying huge penalties to refinance our loans which we originally borrowed from ourselves?

I am not pleased!