Carberry to hold public hearing on $3.2M for new lagoon

The Town of Carberry will hold a public hearing later this month as it looks to borrow money to build a new sewage lagoon.

Council is set to borrow $3.2 million for the new lagoon that would be located next to the town’s two existing lagoons. The town’s future growth is the reason for the build. Construction could begin as early as the start of next year.

“If we want to expand our borders and make more subdivisions or whatever, we have to expand our lagoon,” Carberry Mayor Ray Muirhead said Friday.

The lagoons store the wastewater from sinks and toilets from the town. The “big pit” is dug out and lined, so wastewater doesn’t leak into the soil.

The public hearing is set for Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. in the town office, located at 44 Main St.

Council will also consider giving first reading to the borrowing bylaw at the meeting, the town’s Facebook post said.

The total cost of the project is $8.3 million, to be split between the town, the province and the federal government.

“Our capacity is pretty much at full,” Muirhead said.

“We have one more subdivision that has potential of 80 lots, and once that’s full, we can’t expand any further unless we expand our lagoon.”

The new lagoon will lie directly to the west of the two existing lagoons along Provincial Road 351 and will be nearly as big as the other lagoons put together, Muirhead said.

He said the lagoon will likely be big enough to accommodate growth for at least three decades.

Ottawa and the province are each pitching in more than $2.5 million for the project, leaving Carberry with the $3.2-million balance.

Muirhead said the town is still looking for additional help in covering costs, possibly from the Manitoba Water Services Board or other levels of government.

“The more money we have to pay towards a debenture, the less money we have to put into reserve funds for sewer and fire trucks and health and all the rest of it,” he said.

Without additional funding for the project, the plan is to pay the money back with interest through a debenture.

The public hearing notice said the debenture would be a 20-year term that would be repaid with a maximum of six per cent interest.

A 15-year term would be better, Muirhead said. While the town would pay more back per year over that time, it would save money from the interest it would pay over a longer period.

“Best-case scenario would be a 15-year debenture, and that’s still going to cost us a lot of money. We’re going to have to pay 250 to 300,000 (dollars) a year in payments on that,” he said.

“Over the course of 15 years, when you add it all up and we pay everything, we’ll have paid well over a million dollars of interest,” he said. “And if we go 20 years, we have a lower payment (but) that million-plus dollars of interest is probably hovering close to two million (dollars).”

It isn’t absolutely necessary to start the build right away, he said, but the longer the town waits, the higher costs would be.

» alambert@brandonsun.com