North Cowichan council began taking steps at its meeting on March 19 to meet the challenges related to the fact that the municipality is having trouble keeping up with infrastructure requirements as development applications skyrocket.
Council decided to amend a number of bylaws to mitigate any potential legal risk posed to North Cowichan from requests to connect new developments, or individual lots, to the municipality’s water and sanitary sewer systems in locations, or at times, where insufficient capacity exists.
Chris Osborne, North Cowichan’s planning manager, told council that as urban areas in the municipality grow, it is necessary to expand infrastructure capacity to accommodate new growth.
However, he said if growth demand arrives before infrastructure capacity has been expanded, there is a danger of exceeding the available capacity of the existing water and sewer networks.
“Development approvals must only be granted once sufficient servicing capacity is available,” Osborne said. “The implications of not proceeding with these bylaw amendments are significant. If staff are in a position of being obligated to issue a permit, or allow a connection due to unclear bylaw wording despite not having sufficient capacity, then the risk of exceeding a given system’s capacity arises.”
Osborne said the recommended changes to the bylaws would provide clear legal language to enable the municipality to deny a connection or a building permit to ensure that development is not brought online prematurely before capacity is available.
At the council meeting on Feb. 5, CAO Ted Swabey told council that there are more than 370 development applications in progress in North Cowichan at this time, representing more than 10,000 new housing units.
However, he said the municipality currently has the capacity to service only 4,200 new units, and that the estimated total upgrade of all North Cowichan’s servicing systems that will be needed to meet future development needs has been estimated at approximately $359 million.
Swabey pointed out that North Cowichan, and all municipalities in B.C., have limited means to raise capital for new infrastructure.
“Other municipalities that didn’t catch this issue early enough are now facing legal challenges,” Swabey said at the time.
At the meeting on March 19, Coun. Chris Istace put a positive spin on North Cowichan’s infrastructure challenges.
He said that, while this is a major obstacle that council and staff have to overcome, he thinks it’s a positive development that North Cowichan has received applications for 10,000 new homes from people who want to do business in North Cowichan, as well as build here and move to the municipality.
“Our estimation for the next three years is a 300 per cent activity level increase and nobody expects that kind of demand in North Cowichan,” Istace said.
“It is a beautiful area and we have the amenities, services and organizations that people want to be here so, while it’s going to be really challenging and extremely difficult with hard decisions for us to make, the issue is both good and a bad. We’re a victim of everybody wanting to be here.”
Council also directed staff at the meeting to update North Cowichan’s design standards for its water and sewer systems to accommodate new growth.
