Almost a year has passed since the Municipality of Chatham-Kent promised to set up a working group to talk about higher development charges and no meetings have taken place with the local greenhouse sector.
Meetings with the greenhouse industry, local MPPs and MPs, and area utilities were promised in March 2024 when CK Council voted to increase development fees for water and wastewater from $0.36 per square foot to $12.74 by 2029. However, the Executive Director of The Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers (OGVG) Richard Lee told CK News Today that no contact has been made in the past 10 months. "I have yet to hear from the municipality," said Lee.
Lee said greenhouse owners in Chatham-Kent and Windsor-Essex area are becoming increasingly agitated with the absence of investment in critical infrastructure and are considering constructing a private waterline themselves to service the local sector.
"We have been working with greenhouse owners that are exploring creating a privatized waterline to service CK and potentially expanding as far as Leamington. This is purely conceptual at this time but our members are growing antsy with the lack of support to invest in critical infrastructure in the municipalities we have greenhouse farms already established," he said.
Read more at CKNX