The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Flin Flon has more holes than the plot of a "Friday the 13th" movie. Everywhere you drive, it seems, workers are digging into asphalt and gravel to fix broken, rotted or collapsed sewer and water pipes. So why is Flin Flon's piping infrastructure in such serious disrepair? Because it is old, of course. Really old. So old that Lloyd Robertson could have documented its installation during his days as a cub reporter. It is old because no one has ever taken the time and money to replace it. Decades worth of town and city councils have always found better ways to spend their cash than renewing those vital passages beneath our feet. We now find ourselves in a position where pipes that we know are ancient often get replaced only after an emergency, such as the recent collapse of a storm sewer line on Church Street. Just as the present council deserves credit for renewing a great deal of piping in recent years, their predecessors need to take some of the blame for letting things reach such a sorry state. Aging piping infrastructure is going to eat up a huge chunk of this city's future capital investments. So much is having to be done all at once because of past negligence. So why was there negligence? One can only speculate, but here are some of my guesses: Lack of Cash This is a perennial concern. City Hall has said "We don't have the money" so often that they are starting to remind me of my parents when I wanted a Corvette as a little boy. (Okay, okay, it was a pony). But that excuse can only take councillors so far. They have and always have had at their disposal the means of generating more cash if they believe some of the basic needs of the community are not being tended to. I'm not advocating tax hikes, but as unpopular as they are, they are often necessary. It appears that from a historical perspective at least, taxes have not kept pace with the cost demands of this city and its deteriorating infrastructure. Some believe City Hall should have, and still should today, attempt to renegotiate its financial arrangement with HBMS. The company, most of you will know, pays a grant to city coffers in lieu of actual taxes. Getting Votes Let's face it. The path to political victory is not paved with sewer and water pipes. Unless you have a back-up or a leak on your street, you don't give two hoots about underground piping. This reality could not have been lost on our councillors who, like all politicians, worry about being re-elected (whether they admit it is another story). So they vote to fund projects that will stick in people's minds when they are ready to check off names on election day. "Pipes need replacing? Pffft, that's boring. Let's put a new slide at this park instead!" Perception Let me be blunt. No one knows for sure how long Flin Flon will be here, at least in its present form. Hopefully it will be many centuries before our viable ore runs out, but historically, residents have viewed the future of Flin Flon with some uncertainty. This was especially true in the first several decades of the community's existence. Long-dead councillors and mayors may have thought, "Why worry about infrastructure? This place might not even be here five years from now." Flin Flon's infrastructure challenges are not going away. Meeting these challenges will require more political courage and foresight than past town and city councils could muster. Local Angle runs Fridays.
