Council Adopts Do Nothing Approach for Princeton Wastewater

Thursday, 13 February 2020 14:38

Oxford County has decided to adopt the Do Nothing Approach when it comes to wastewater servicing in Princeton.

PRINCETON - Oxford County has decided to adopt the Do Nothing Approach when it comes to wastewater servicing in Princeton.

Residents currently have access to municipal water, however the village does not have sewers and residents rely on private septic tanks. Bev Beaton has been involved in this process since 2002 when they first talked about municipal water being brought into Princeton. In 2006, residents voted for a waste water servicing study to be done in Princeton.

Beaton says he was disappointed with yesterday's vote.

"Today is the end result of that study, where the County has by resolution, turned down the opportunity for Princeton to be serviced by wastewater and in my opinion they put the Village back 100 years, put the nail in the coffin of any substantive growth in Princeton or progress."

Beaton expects this subject will be revisited in the near future, as he plans to move forward with this idea. Princeton residents have access to municipal water, only 80 percent are currently hooked up and Beaton says the others are vulnerable to the contamination of the aquifers they are drawing from.

Beaton says he is not convinced the County is correct in their Environmental Assessment.

"A mailer will be sent out to Princeton residents that the County intends to close out the Environmental Assessment and they have reduced it from a C, the grand daddy of them all to a an A, which I don't think is incorrect, so I am going to perhaps seek a readdress for that. Basically if somebody wants to initiate another movement to Princeton service, they would have to initiate another Environmental Assessment."

Council voted to do nothing because in a poll of residents, nearly 70 percent said they didn't want to have to pay to install wastewater services. Estimates vary as to how much each resident would have to chip in to pay for waste water services, however it was believed to be in the range of $20,000.

A Princeton resident also had a delegation at Council on Wednesday. He told council that he did not want to pay for a wastewater service. He said if his septic is broken or breaks, he would pay for it, but he did not want to have to pay $20,000 to connect to wastewater services. He noted that they keep telling him it would increase his home value, however he doesn't want to move, therefore has no interest in that.

Other Princeton residents have also called into Heart FM news to state their are other reasons they didn't want the sewer connection. Essentially a lot of the residents do not want to see growth in their small village and are opposed to plans of building more homes in Princeton. They say they're opposed to the Van Wee's family proposal of building an additional 300 homes in Princeton.