The Town of Bridgewater is one of several municipalities that got an unwanted surprise in the mail: a bill from Nova Scotia Power.
The bill is to the tune of $30,000; it’s for work done nearly a decade ago.
In 2011, the power company mandated all roadway lights in the province be switched over to LED bulbs by 2019; Over 1600 bulbs were swapped in the Town of Bridgewater.
Conversions began across the province in 2012, when Mayor David Mitchell was a councillor.
“I just didn’t understand the justification for trashing things that work instead of just going one-by-one as they burn out,” Mitchell said. “It didn’t make sense to me at the time. Also, if we had done it that way, none of the municipalities would have been receiving this giant bill.”
The Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board approved the final cost of the work in 2016. Letters were sent out to municipalities between July and September of 2021, a spokesperson for Nova Scotia power said in an email.
As part of the swap over, municipalities had the option to buy their own LED streetlights from Nova Scotia Power and assume all responsibility and operating costs, or they could continue getting service from NS Power.
Bills were sent out in the middle of a fiscal year, meaning many municipalities won’t have budgeted for it.
“We’re in a position that we can afford to pay it,” Mitchell said. “But not every municipality would be. They’d probably have to make installments; they might have to wait until their next budget year, especially with COVID and the challenges that many communities have had.”
The bill won’t cause any increase in costs to people living in Bridgewater.
