Well, I don’t know about you, but I must admit I don’t really care one way or the other if the Chatham-Kent Public Utilities Commission (PUC) remains a separate entity or is sucked into the behemoth that is the Municipality of Chatham-Kent. 

All I care about is being able to access safe drinking water and offload wastewater at the most efficient and affordable price possible. 

Throw in a side of financial sustainability and I’ll be a happy camper. 

Unfortunately, based on previous experiences of neglect that are all coming home to roost now, neither the PUC nor the municipality have shown themselves to be great stewards of their assets, but hope springs eternal. 

I get it. 

Nobody likes to throw money at unexciting things like infrastructure, but the fact is, we all use it and we owe it to future users to pay for what we use and to maintain the system so it will be there for them. 

And now, because we haven’t been doing that on the water/wastewater end of things, we’re all going to be playing a painful game of catch-up for at least the next decade. 

Already, the PUC have announced their residential customers will be looking at an average annual increase of $132 for 2026 but that’s just year one. 

Consultants KPMG presented a report last month recommending that the PUC be dissolved, and “reintegrating water and wastewater services directly into the Municipality’s administrative structure.” 

The report notes that the existing PUC was formed back........

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