BEAVER BANK: After a long, hard and successful fight for adequate residential water supplies, the Monarch Rivendale Community Association (MRCA) is returning to core functions, like building relationships between residents and beautifying the surroundings.
“It’s all about relationship-building,” said newly minted chair Karin Harrison. “Our homes are so far apart, and we all have busy lives. If we don’t have a balance between work and family, we’ll lose the whole feeling of what it is to be a community.”
While the MRCA was started about five years ago to create parklands, it has been consumed in recent times by a struggle to ensure adequate water supplies to homes in the subdivision, which is in the Beaver Brook environs. A well-mannered grapple with Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) brought city water into the community. Now, the provincial government has said it may pass legislation requiring developers to perform hydro-geological surveys in advance of developing subdivisions.
Already, the water victory has taken pressure off MRCA, allowing it to move ahead with a multitude of plans, including a community hero recognition program, policing strategy, sidewalk construction and more parkland development. A focus on young people is top of mind, as well as a return to event planning, like the annual barbeque that was overlooked last year.
Harrison has recently taken over from Brad Conrad and Bill Trask, the co-chairs who spearheaded the water fight. Conrad moved into his Monarch Rivendale home in 2005. Three days later, he was out of water. He had his well dug deeper and even dynamited, but his supply was still inadequate.
“I knew if I was one resident experiencing these problems in a brand new home, there were others out there,” said Conrad. “It’s kind of like being an alcoholic. No one wants to admit to it. But as soon as one person steps up and says, ‘I have a water problem,’ then hands come up. They’re embarrassed. They don’t want to lower the value of their homes.”
Conrad and Trask met first with erstwhile District 2 Councillor Krista Snow, and then with her replacement, Barry Dalrymple. They met with HRM officials, as well, and the water file eclipsed most everything else the MRCA was involved in. The leadership of Conrad and Trask represented a markedly different focus from that of founding chairs Sue Burns and Nadine Walker, who stepped down after successfully bringing parklands and trails to the neighbourhood.
“I didn’t want to see (MRCA) die,” said Conrad. “If they stepped down and no one else came in as the chair and the co-chair, it would’ve gone away. I saw some real value in the association, doing the barbeques, doing these community awareness things. You have a bigger voice when you’re a group, versus several individuals.”
Both Conrad and Harrison are relieved to be focusing on other things.
“It was never meant to be just about water,” said Harrison. “I want to bring it back to the community.”
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