
SOUTH DUNDAS – Residents in Morrisburg and Iroquois will continue to pay their separate rates for sewer service.
South Dundas council had explored the possibility of combining the rates last summer. Morrisburg pays a sewer surcharge based on 75 per cent of their water rate. For Iroquois, it’s 100 per cent.
Deputy Mayor Jim Locke and Coun. Bill Ewing had pushed for the merger. “Somewhere across the line, as far as I’m concerned, it’s one municipality,” Ewing said in June 2017. “It should be one rate across the board.”
Putting the systems together would have hit Morrisburg ratepayers in the wallet for an extra 9 per cent while Iroquois residents would have got a 16 per cent break.
The numbers validate public concern that tinkering with the rates would lead to one community subsidizing the other.
Council voted last week to leave the system as is.
There was roughly 203,000 cubic meters (44.6 million gallons) of sewage processed last year for Morrisburg and 105,000 cubic meters (23.1 million gallons) for Iroquois.