Langley sewer fees to rise by 25% due to North Shore Waste Water Treatment Plant: Mayor

Property owners in Metro Vancouver are beginning to discover how much the cost overruns at the North Shore Waste Water Treatment plant are going to cost them.

The mayor of the City of Langley admits it’s not a great situation. Nathan Pachal explains that while everyone knew it was coming because of the project’s budget blowout, it isn’t any less painful. The project’s original $700 million budget has risen to a taxpayer bill of over $3 billion.

Pachal explains that for taxpayers in his community, the regional district’s portion is increasing by about 25 per cent for sewer fees alone.

“It depends on if you live in a strata or townhouse. And we have water meters in Langley city as well. So that’s just something to keep in mind,” he explained. “So if you look at the fee for the strata townhouse average-ish user, it works out to about $68 per year. And again, that’s the average. … If you look at a single-family home, the average is about $119,” he explained.

Pachal says things have to change, adding that transparency is the key.

“For me personally, when I look at this, I really think we need to improve how we manage these large infrastructure projects,” he said.

“So for me, what I would like to see moving forward are two things, one of them, and I believe they’ve implemented, is a technical review panel for complicated projects. The other thing, I think that’s really important with an organization as large as Metro Vancouver, is an independent auditor that reports to the board.

“It’s not about distrust in necessarily the staff or the folks doing the work at Metro Vancouver, but in such a large organization and with such large projects, we really need extra checks and balances. And we need people that are accountable directly to the board to make sure what we’re saying and seeing actually checks out,” he added.

Pachal points to the provincial government’s independent auditor as a model of what the district could implement.

“We need to have those checks and balances.”

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