Half full on a dry day: what our pipes and our power can really take

What the Town's own reports say

Start with the rumour, because it comes up at every door: the town cannot take new homes, the plant is full. The Town publishes a report on each plant every year, on its own website. The sewage plant on Main Street East is rated for 13,800 cubic metres a day. Last year it carried 7,064 on an average day. That is about half. The year before, 58 percent. The year before that, 62.

The water plant is rated for 27,275 cubic metres a day. Its busiest day of 2025 treated 8,349. Less than a third of what it is rated for. And in January, council approved 36 townhouses on full municipal services. The report to council raised no capacity problem.

The wires tell the same story for homes. Hydro One's regional plan, published in February, rates the town's main station at 18 megawatts. Our winter load in 2024 was 14.9. Hydro One sees no need for more until 2037. Room for years of new homes.

Sewage plant · average day in 2025, against its 13,800 rating

51%

Water plant · busiest day of 2025, against its 27,275 rating

31%

Main power station · winter load in 2024, against its 18 megawatt rating

14.9 of 18 MW

So on a dry day, on the Town's own numbers, the rumour is wrong.

Where the real limits are

Storms. About five kilometres of our sewers still carry rain and sewage in the same pipe, and one overflow at Cameron and Main lets it into the river in a storm. In nine months of twelve last year, the month's peak day went past what the plant is built for. In 2024 the plant bypassed five times. The Town's own log shows five overflows to the river so far this year, the most since 2020. That is the real sewer limit. It decides where a new street can connect, and what it costs. It is a pipe problem, street by street. The plant itself has room.

One big factory. The main station has room for homes. A single big industrial load is a different question, and it goes to Hydro One first, with a connection study, before anyone signs anything. The lights. In 2024 our utility's customers averaged 5.59 hours without power. Take out the outages that started upstream, on Hydro One's lines, and the regulator's scorecard shows 2.57. Most of the hours the lights were out came from upstream of our own utility. And a transformer from 1965 is still in service at our main station. Its replacement has slipped a year, to 2027-2028.

The number nobody has printed

Ontario has a rule for exactly this, Procedure D-5-1. It says a municipality should not recommend approval of new development until it has worked out and filed its uncommitted reserve capacity: how much of each plant is already spoken for, and how much is left. Hawkesbury's number is not on the public record. It may sit in a drawer at Town Hall.

The study that would produce it is bought. In May, council awarded a water and sewer servicing study for future development, shared with Champlain, for $109,199 before tax. In September it was still being written. Meanwhile the Town's own water financial plan, adopted last year, assumes the town will not grow, and our own utility's five-year plan assumes no new development. That is where the rumour lives.

The Town has had no development charges since September 2025. The old by-law raised about $445,000 in five years, and this month administration recommended not replacing it.

How we got here

Who controls what

Four hands are on this file.

The part nobody campaigns on: the votes

A mayor of Hawkesbury has one vote of seven and writes the budget.

1. My penCouncil vote The capacity number on one page, in my first hundred days. How many homes and how much industry the water plant, the sewage plant and the wires can take today, with the engineer's name on it. How often the power went out, and why. I bring council the motion for the reserve-capacity statement the province's rule asks for, and I ask our utility, in writing, for its spare megawatts at each station. Then it goes on one page of the Town's website, dated.
2. ApplicationCouncil vote One project in the 2 December bid, with the price said out loud. There is a Canada-Ontario fund for towns without development charges. It closes on 2 December, one project per town, up to $20 million, and the price is written into it: no development charges on new homes before 2031. I ask council to pick one project already in design and file it before the deadline. The town pays at least a fifth. I say the price out loud because the guidelines do.
3. Council vote The last combined sewers, dug once. The five kilometres that still carry rain and sewage together go onto the worst-streets-first roads list, so each street is opened once, for the road and the pipe. And the overflow count gets reported every year, beside the roads report card.
4. Council vote Make the power hold. The outage hours published every year, split into our own wires, Hydro One's lines and the weather. The 1965 transformer's replacement held to 2027-2028. And before the Champlain agreement is signed, a written answer from Hydro One on who feeds the industrial lands and what it costs to connect.
5. My pen A serviced-land list an investor can read. Every site in town and in the park: water, sewer, power, cost and time to connect. This summer the Town hired an economic development coordinator. That list belongs on that desk, my budget funds the desk, and the park and Main Street are the two files I bring to it first.

What I cannot promise, and what I will try

I cannot promise a bigger plant. The reports say we do not need one on a dry day. If the study says otherwise when it lands, I will say so, and this plan becomes the expansion case. I cannot promise a river that never sees an overflow: that is five kilometres of pipe, dug street by street, over more than one budget. And I cannot promise a jobs number, because the capacity number comes first. What I will try: the number in public within a hundred days, one project in the 2 December bid, the sewers on the roads list, the outage hours in the open. All of it at council, in public, four votes of seven.

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