I knew it was big as soon as I drove by the turn-off to the legion hall in Hepworth; I've lived here almost 9 years and I've never seen that parking lot so full the cars spilled out down that street and out to line a good 300 meters along either side of the county road to Sauble.

Official count put the crowd at 521 people who turned out to the unfunded and impromptu informational meeting to learn about and ask questions on the pipeline proposal being put through the council of the Town of South Bruce Peninsula. And some pretty amazing facts they were, even if you just keep to the facts.

I hardly know where to begin ...

One place I could begin: Use of the hall tonight was donated by the Hepworth Legion; when they heard what it was about they dubbed it "community information" and waived all fees, unlike the town-run Sauble Beach Community Centre who, if you ask me, should maybe re-think their community support strategy ...

Something to keep in mind, and next time you've a free Thursday or weekend afternoon, do drop by the Legion pub and have a brew to show them you appreciate their civil civic mindedness.

I'm also hoping some others will chime in here, either in comments to this story or to post summaries of their own --- community dialog is, after all, why I built this website --- but let me preface a disclaimer that I arrived late, an hour late, but nonetheless was in time for such tidbits as there being no known conflict of interest bylaws, an odd co-incidence of Power Budd being intimately involved with a UK company that "finances privatized water systems", and an announcement from the Town that this proposed sewer/pipeline will be a P3 which our Ontario readers may recall as the same cute term used to describe the corporation who own Toronto's 407 highway ...

on the pro side

To his credit and I respect Jay Kirkland immensely and not just for this show of bravery, Jay spoke at length about the justifications for the estimated $15,000 per resident costs involved (not including, apparently, the costs to rip out your pipes because the new system will be pressurized beyond what your cottage sandpoint-fed system was designed to accept) and that while this is admittedly a tad more than the accepted (and confirmed by shouts) estimate of $5,000 to replace both your septic and sandpoint, that it was a black and white choice, that one bad septic could poison many, that it was a cut choice between sick children dying or spending money on a sewer.

I respect Jay, but I always have trouble with that sort of reasoning and so did a gentleman in the back who was ignored as he shouted

There's a big difference between spending zero dollars and spending seventy million dollars

indeed. Jay received an uproar of applause for saying that whatever the facts once the facts are in, it should be something decided by a general vote and not something railroaded through council.

alternatives

There was some mention from the crowd on how simple things, affordable things, common-sense things might be done and done today to address water-threatening hotspots. Fixing drainage patterns, for example, or, since we are all effectively shareholders in the Corporation of the Town, then Shareholder Loans to assist those who cannot afford to clean up their hot spot. Doug Gammie spoke at length on the need for ground water stewardship and a sense of responsibility by every citizen for the quality of the aquafer -- yesterday, the Sun-Times had published a lengthy letter from Doug detailing the history of the Sauble Beach and Hepworth Water and Sewer Environmental Process since 1995.

Others mentioned how the head of Power Budd had recently been fired from the Ontario energy board leadership, how cost estimates on these scales are invariably low-ball, how there was a resolution on the table that would grant Power Budd leave to proceed without involving council acting only on consultation to the mayor and the head of public-works ...

it was, as you can guess, an interesting time. Final tallies on the petition gathered at the door gave over 600 votes against the pipeline (some collected before the event) and only 16 in favour.

taking our story online

At the end of the meeting, I invited all participants to share some of their research here on the SBP and I hope to see some of the many reports and research URLs show up here so we have some record we can share.

For those who do drop in, I apologize in advance for those max connection errors that you'll sometimes get on my poor overworked server; sorry, its the most computer I can afford right now and if you just click your browser Reload it generally comes back online. Just think of it as a bad signal to a distant station where you have to whack the TV to get the picture to stop rolling ...