I do not understand what…

I do not understand what this proposal is trying to solve.

Public sector control has led us to significantly underfund infrastructure where we are now at 10% of required renewal expenditures to remain in 'good' standing. On top of this, we have 70% of hauled septage being land applied and 1/3 of septic systems failing. There has been a desire to ban land application outright since Walkerton, but no solution has emerged.

Why has no solution emerged? Well, we have a decentralized hauled septage pre-processing solution which extracts nutrients to enable sewer discharge. Being a private corp., we can fund this entirely ourselves. Our main blocker right now is that there is no zoning in many municipalities for a private corp. to own and operate this type of facility. Some public works and planning officials we speak with feel bad when communicating this as they have seen the problem first hand.

So, we have solutions available, but because of a desire to retain public control (when it is clearly not working or providing viable solutions to pressing problems), it is hard for us to move forward.

We are more than happy to collaborate and work with the public sector, but an outright ban on private ownership is completely the wrong move. The current system is headed towards another Walkerton catastrophe, and most people within the industry recognize this.

Every other industry, such as landfills, is already facilitating the shift from public to private for similar reason (lack of capital to expand capacity of which we have 10 years left, and offset the long-tail management of capped landfills).

I strongly urge you to reconsider this proposal and instead look to work increasingly so with the private sector. This proposal is a step forward, rather than a step in the right direction.

Kind regards,
Robert Kienle, MSc
Messini Capital