[bcrl]

I live in a rural area with a small local town about an hour outside of Ottawa. Lots of rural houses are going up, as the hour drive is okay for the occasional commute. Nothing is being built in the town (which currently has about 350 dwellings). The problem? There is no local water / sewage system, and quite a few of the wells in town get contaminated with e-coli on a regular basis. Nobody wants to build a new subdivision in the town because it doesn't have the basic infrastructure need to support development.

The worst part of this is that the town has the money in the bank to build the water and sewage system. There's upwards of $8 million earmarked for the project. However, each homeowner is going to be responsible for $30k in hookup costs, and the town will have to shell out $500,000 per year to operate the new water system. Since it's a low income area, the >50% property tax increase needed to run the system won't fly, and neither will the hook-up costs. Instead, all the new builds are focused in rural areas where there is no infrastructure needed or in the larger towns / cities where costs are significantly higher but deemed to be an acceptable risk by developers.