City To File Stay & Appeal - Dam Order

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After a four hour marathon city councillors voted to instruct the city solicitor to prepare papers to file an Appeal and a Stay of the order issued by the Water Comptroller. The lawyer said it would be a hard uphill climb and offered little optimism for success.

Council also included in the motion that a delegation of Council would seek audience with senior government officials to also look for a political solution.

The order had been modified to include three options for the remediation of the Colliery Dams which the city has been grappling with since Oct. 2012.

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As someone who has been on this merry-go-round since it was first fired up by Mr. Kenning and Mr. Simms I offer the following, which I state clearly is nothing but my opinion.

From the beginning the story that came out of city hall stretched credibility to most with a reasonable amount of common sense. Sudden catastrophe as a wall of water tore through Harewood claiming as many as 150 lives. Cost of up to $30 million to deal with the problem.

The council of the day behaved like a well trained flock of sheep who seemed to carry on just bleating out the official staff-generated story line.

A friend and I were musing the other day about what the hell is really behind the Colliery Dam saga, as the official version simply does not pass the smirk test. We agree, this will be the subject of a study and book one day, when/if the truth ever comes out.

We have spent $2.5 million and still don't know how the dams are constructed, yet are being told by the Province that we must spend further multiple millions to mitigate an event that might happen once in 34,000 years and perhaps cause a couple of million in property damage.

If this council can not finally bring some common sense to bear on this issue, I look forward to a long, hot, politically charged summer where some members of council and the public finally stand erect and tell DSS the standards they wish to impose on these two little ponds is absolutely absurd.