WINCHESTER – Be careful what you wish for could be something North Dundas councillors are saying to themselves as an unprecedented number of requests for water and sewer applications have arrived at their council table.

The result of all that growth threatens the township’s 20-year plan to upgrade their water and sewer capacities and shrinks that time line from 20 to a mere three years.

Mayor Fraser said, “It is quite a deluge of interest and I know we were looking at 20 years out, and all of a sudden we are looking at three years out.”

Deputy Mayor Armstrong said, “It’s unlike any situation that we have ever had. We have celebrated buildings going up in the past and have been quite happy.”

Normally North Dundas has had a 1.1 per cent growth each year.

“To see these numbers is daunting,” said Armstrong.

Councillor Thompson said, it is great to see the interest. It is not a problem we were foreseeing for years to come. For any of the existing ones, we will have to make sure and allow for the services that have been put into the ground. There have been agreements made and accepted.”

Mayor Fraser said, “There will have to be some decisions made. This is quite an unusual predicament to be in.”

As of Feb 23, there were 240 units left to be used by new development in Winchester and Chesterville.

Traditionally the municipality receives eight to 10 requests each year for water and sewer allocations, so there was not a potential shortfall expected. Over the next three years the municipality had expected to be working on their water capacity in the form of new wells or other ways to bring more water to North Dundas. That effort would be part of a 20-year multi-million-dollar plan.

The council had already allocated water and sewer units to: Winchester Meadows – 36 water and 36 sewer units, Guy Racine subdivision – 5 water and 5 sewer units, Davidson Subdivision – 1 water and 1 sewer unit, Winfields – 4 water and 4 sewer units, and Maverick – 13.5 water and 13.5 sewer units.

At the meeting they allocated units to another 11 developments adding another 162.4 water units to the total.

Calvin Pol, the director of planning building and enforcement presented a list of projects that were not yet on the allocation list but had the potential, if followed up on, would leave the municipality with very few units to offer to developers.

The first reaction of councillors was to make sure projects like the rehabilitation of Dundas Manor had what water units they would need in the future.

Fraser said, “Those projects that are ongoing need to be completed and developers have shown a commitment to move forward.”

Pol said the units for Dundas Manor had not been put into the master table of allocations yet. He suggested the council put five units in the table just for the manor.

Pol sited development applications that were in the process of going through the system; examples were Dundas Manor that will most likely need five units and the Woods Subdivision in Winchester would need 78 units.