Whenever a toilet is flushed or a faucet is turned in southwest Hagersville, water sent to the town’s wastewater treatment plant is treated and released into the Harrop municipal drain.
From there, it travels through farm properties on its way to Sandusk Creek and Lake Erie.
South of town, a battle is brewing over who should pay to maintain the municipal drain.
The Harrop drain is a seven-kilometre municipal drainage works that is fed by approximately 1,000 hectares of land, including the southwest portion of Hagersville. Haldimand County recently completed a new assessment schedule for engineering costs on the Harrop drain under Section 76 of the Ontario Drainage Act. Costs are assessed to all landowners within the watershed.
The Harrop drain was created under a 1957 engineer’s report. Since then, responsibility for the drain has shifted from Walpole Township to the Town of Haldimand, the City of Nanticoke and now Haldimand County.
Earlier this year, more than a dozen rural property owners in the former Walpole Township, about five kilometres south of Hagersville, launched appeals at Haldimand’s court of revision, an appeal body that allows landowners to challenge their drainage assessments.
A January court of revision ruling that resulted in fee reductions for some landowners has since been appealed to the Ontario Drainage Tribunal.
Several members of the Phibbs family, who live in the area, are appealing their assessments, including cousins David, Bob and Ray Phibbs, who spoke with Metroland.
David Phibbs, who saw his assessment for drain engineering costs reduced from $1,581 to $1,324, said rural landowners are still being asked to pay more than their fair share.
“The rural property owners feel that the county should be paying for all maintenance of this drain, as the Hagersville sewage plant pumps artificial water into the drain 24-7 and 365 days of the year,” he said.
An August 2023 report from BluePlan Engineering states that, based on daily wastewater treatment plant effluent flow data from 2016 to 2020, the average daily flow into the Harrop drain was 2,872 cubic metres per day.
Bob Phibbs, who owns four properties in the Harrop drain watershed, has been assessed fees totalling more than $4,300.
He said drain maintenance is seldom an issue in the area.
“We’ve maintained it more than the (county) has,” he said. “Anything that needed to be done to it, we looked after it.”
He added, “If (the county) looked after the first 2.5 kilometres and charged the town of Hagersville and let us look after the rest of it, I don’t think there’d be an issue.”
Ray Phibbs said the Harrop drain is more of detriment than a benefit to rural landowners.
“We’re doing the county a favour by allowing them to drain into this drain and run it through our properties. Is that not compensation enough? Should we be charged at all? We want our portion to be less because we feel that the town (of Hagersville) is contributing more (water) than we are.”
Coun. Marie Trainer, Ward 4 representative and a member of the county’s court of revision, said she supports lower fees for rural landowners.
Trainer said she favours a county-wide funding formula.
“It seems that the county should be paying it all. It should be a county-wide cost,” she said.
Citing the ongoing Ontario Drainage Tribunal appeal, Haldimand County spokesperson Kyra Hayes declined to comment.
“Given the current legal process underway we are not able to provide details at this time,” she said in an email.
Appellants are currently waiting on a hearing date at the Ontario Drainage Tribunal for a final ruling on their drain assessments.
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