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NORTH AMERICA:
FIXING THE AGING INFRASTRUCTURE IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA
AND MONCTON, NB
DIRTY WATER IN MONCTON, NB
In the late 1990s Moncton began experiencing boil
water advisories, some of which lasted several weeks.
The city had a rudimentary water treatment plant
that only treated the incoming water with chlorine.
The outcome was dirty, yellow water with sediment.
Mayor Brian Murphy was elected
in 1998. He remembers the problem.
Brian Murphy: Our
publicist will tell you: look, it was the colour
of brown tea. It was the colour of poop, it was
awful, it was undrinkable. Our filters would clog
up, hot water heaters would have to be replaced
every three years. It was deplorable. The spring
water companies may have enjoyed it because, as
the ‘90s grew on, we started having more boil
orders and they almost became, I hate to say it,
but people became almost used to boiling water or
buying water.
A NEW WATER
TREATMENT PLANT WITH PRIVATE MONEY
The city was considering private enterprise before
Murphy was elected. In 1995, the city issued tenders
to build a new treatment plant. USFilter Canada
won the bid. They paid for and built a modern filtration
plant for $23 million dollars, and delivered the
project on time in October of 1999.
Under city estimations, the plants
would have cost $32 million to build. And city officials
didn’t know where this money would come from.
Once finished, USFilter began a
twenty-year contract to operate the plant, and sell
water to the city at a rate agreed upon by the company
and the city according to company costs.
This arrangement between a government and a private
operator is known as a public-private partnership.
(Read more
about public-private partnerships  )
It became a model of how the public and private sectors
could work together. (more
about the plant )
Water costs have increased in Moncton, and there has
also been a huge leap in the quality of the water.
THE WALKERTON
CRISIS
In the spring of 2000, the drinking water of Walkerton,
Ontario was contaminated with e-coli bacteria. Seven
people died and more than two thousand fell ill.
The government of Ontario commissioned an inquiry
to look into what exactly happened in Walkerton,
and how to ensure that a similar tragedy doesn't
happen again.
Mayor Murphy was invited to discuss
the benefits of his city’s public-private
partnership as a way to get clean drinking water
to the people. (read Murphy's presentation
 )
REPLACING THE
PIPES
With the success of his water treatment plant, Mayor
Murphy was ready to move to the water delivery system.
Some of the pipes were 122 years old, but most were
between 30-70 years old.
City engineers estimated that it would
take $70 million to repair and replace pipes under
the city over the next 20 years. Moncton did not
have this kind of money to spend.
USFilter approached Moncton with
a proposal to do the job with private capital. In
2001, the city started confidential negotiations
with USFilter. (see a letter
about the proposal )
For Murphy, it was logical to consider
a deal with USFilter.
Brian Murphy: You
would want to have the same operator of the treatment
plant and of the system. Makes some sense. If they
delivered these savings on the construction and
operation of the water treatment plant, and they
have a track record after time, which I feel now
they do, then maybe they can do it in the distribution
system.
OPPOSITION TO
THE DEAL
Not everyone on city council agreed with the Mayor’s
assessment. Councilor Brian Hicks spoke up. He was
opposed to USFilter getting the job without a competitive
bidding process involving other candidates.
Brian Hicks:
Week after week, I was the
only one asking questions and people were looking
at me like I had three heads. But they were just
so basic, they were just so simple, they were just
dealing with the transparency.
Through further persistence, councilor
Hicks found out that the $70 million was an estimate
and that they didn’t actually know the definitive
figure.
Brian Hicks: City
staff have used that seventy million dollar figure
as the definitive figure and just when I started
asking questions, then it became ball park and then
at the end of the day we found out, you know we
really didn’t know as a City how much it would
cost if we did that work ourselves.
As Hicks continued his opposition,
the province of New Brunswick weighed in. The deal
did not meet the requirements under New Brunswick’s
Public
Purchasing Act.
Murphy would need to follow a tendered process to
follow the letter of the law.
This was a set-back for Mayor Murphy,
but he and his advisors were still determined to
get the deal with USFilter through.
In February 2002, USFilter wrote two letters to
the city accusing Hicks of being in conflict of
interest, and demanding that he be removed from
any further deliberations. (read one of the
letters )
THE DILLON REPORT
After all the protestations by Hicks and other councilors,
Moncton commissioned a private engineering firm- Dillon
Consulting- to do an extensive analysis of the Moncton
infrastructure. Whereas the previous report was an
estimate, the Dillon report got down and dirty, actually
digging up sample pipes and figuring out the worth
of the system.
Instead of $70 million, the Dillon
report determined that the job could be done for
$48 million.
Brian Hicks:
I guess the scary part is what
if USFilter had come in and said: we can do your
work for $60 million? Everybody would have put their
hands up and said: isn’t this wonderful, we
just saved $10 million. The other thing that the
Dillon Report surprised me on was how strongly that
they recommended that the city stay with a water
distribution system that was not only owned by the
city, but operated by the city.
For Mayor Murphy, he sees this outcome
differently:
Brian Murphy: Who
do I blame for that? Well, I blame myself for being
slow on it. I should have been quicker on it. And
I blame the intervention of people who really, their
only interest is gad flying about at cocktail parties
in Rosedale or protecting their job at the union
offices on upper Yonge Street. I mean really that
and the usual political crowd who will make an issue
out of something. So there’s enough blame
to go around as to why the system isn’t working
the way it should.
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