City faced with public-private edict

By MARKUS ERMISCH Staff reporterOct 29 2006 http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/
City hall has no choice but to at least consider a public-private partnership (P3) when building a new waste-water treatment plant, says the Liberal MLA for Kamloops-North Thompson. "It's just the way to go," Kevin Krueger told KTW on Friday. He said that if city hall doesn't at least demonstrate to the government that it has considered a public-private partnership for the proposed waste-water plant, he will be unable to get any provincial cash for the project from Victoria."If it's not a P3, the province may not consider it at all," Krueger said. Premier Gordon Campbell, in a speech at the Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention in Victoria, told his audience that, henceforth, all provincially funded capital projects with a value of more than $20 million must first be considered to be built through a public-private partnership unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise. Kamloops' proposed waste-water treatment plant, expected to cost at least $50 million, is a project that would fall under this new requirement. Krueger said the measure is designed to save the province - and ultimately the taxpayers - money. "We're saving millions this way," he said, pointing out that all P3s involving provincial funding in B.C. are on budget and on time. Mayor Terry Lake sat in the audience when Campbell delivered his speech, as did city CAO Randy Diehl. Both were lukewarm to the premier's proposal. "It's a clear signal that [the government wants] communities to look closely at P3s for infrastructure projects that receive provincial funding," Lake said. "If we were to go ahead with our sewage-treatment plant and apply for provincial funding, we'd have to give them a good reason why we were not going with a P3." Lake said that "at this point, we hadn't contemplated a public-private partnership for sewage treatment." Diehl said it may be too early to discuss a public-private partnership. He said such an arrangement may work from the government's perspective, but may not necessarily work for municipalities. David Duckworth is in charge of the waste-water plant project. "It's something we're going to have to explore, obviously, if it's a condition for getting the [provincial] grant funds," said Kamloops' director of public works. Duckworth said "most public-private partnerships for water plants and waste-water plants haven't worked out too well in Canada and North America." Duckworth used as an example the waste-water treatment plant in the Okanagan community of Summerland, which was originally supposed to be built as a P3. Although Duckworth doesn't recall the details of the case, he said that after two years, the district ended up taking over the entire operation of the plant. Further development of the Kamloops waster-water plant has been shelved, pending the announcement of a new federal-provincial infrastructure project.